In any one year there are numerous art competitions across Australia with some thematically focussed and some medium-specific. There is never any shortage of entrants. The art competition has been a cultural staple for more than a century and is inevitably used as a guide and a platform. Sculpture events are no less popular than ones featuring two-dimensional work and one on the scale of Sculpture By The Sea at Bondi invites artists to work on a monumental scale whereas a similar prize centered around painting may well be restricted by available wall space.

As an event the Brighton Jetty Sculpture prize attracts plenty of interest from local sculptors in all sorts of mediums and locals who wander down from their morning coffee and pastries on Jetty Road on a Saturday morning. Dogs on leads abound and unruly two-year olds are everywhere. This year there was a record number of entries and a judge’s cull which was akin to a curatorial eye. To me there were too many metal birds and sharks [though nothing like the plethora of kangaroos in 2023] interspersed with a smattering of bland Corten steel structures happily rusting in the sun. I’d expected to be excited, but boredom was the dominant emotion as I recognised similar work from that exhibited last year and saw endless examples of pastry-cutter laser shapes welded together.  I listened to the audience as they stopped to read the plaques and most of the comments could be prefaced by ‘isn’t that clever’. The same public get their vote as well and I fully expect the winner will be one of the shiny stainless steel forms glinting in the sun that will catch the collective eye rather than driftwood people or scrap steel resurrected as a recognisable form. Shiny objects have always been the province of barter and exchange and entire continents have been bought for a handful of shiny coloured beads.

I think that the single most telling factor is not the endeavours of the artists but the curation and the site itself. Setting half of the sculptures in a playground of swings, roundabouts and seating essentially diminishes their visual impact. In many respects telling apart the sculptures from the bins, benches and slides is a task in itself. The incidental shadows cast by a dividing fence were in many respects more interesting than the works scattered around the grass areas in front of it. The indoor ones in the two tents fared no better. There is little space to be had and the crowds take up most of it. Sculptures on the beachfront are better situated and the number of permanent plinths increases by the year but the hotch-potch nature of sculpture and chosen site suggest that little regard is given to the overall look and flow. The idea of a sculpture trail is to lead the audience but I could see little connection between adjacent objects or any sense of organisation. Perhaps it is simply too difficult.

I wasn’t surprised that a metal and wood shark took out the main prize. After all, we were by the sea. However, it was gratifying that one of the few genuinely conceptual pieces was given the status it deserved as it harked back to the early days of Australia and the decimation of the Aboriginal population even though while I was there the audience passed it by with little regard other than stopping momentarily to read the plaque on the ground. It occupied less of the collective mind than the swings, roundabouts, rubbish bins, dogs on leashes and prams which had to be avoided at all costs. The numerous signs denying a possible tactile response to the sculpture obviously did not apply to the council-erected amenities and I did wonder if a council bench could be told apart from an artistic one adjacent to the path but then again, the notion of functionality was a critical factor in some minds. As someone said to me last year, ‘if I can’t hang my car keys on it, why would I buy it?’