Sunday, September 2, 2007

Swell Sculpture

Its about time for the annual Swell Sculpture Festival to open on the beautiful Currumbin beachfront in Australia. This time last year I was working frantically to complete this piece for Swell.

It is called 'Currumbin Chedi' and I began the original sketches for this work when I returned to Australia after a trip to Thailand in December 2004 when the tsunamis hit the Andaman coast. We were near the beach at Ao Nang, Krabi getting ready to take the boys out for a day snorkeling when the waves hit.
I spent the next totally surreal 10 days translating at Krabi hopsital and at a the makeshift morgue which had been set up in Krabi town. In Krabi 740 people died. I still need to pinch myself that it even happened.
This piece was dedicated to all the Burmese migrant workers who were working on hotel construction in the area and whose bodies were not able to be collected by their loved ones. See Asian Human Rights Commission.

This work is made from a variety of fibres and standing at almost 2 meters, was challenging in terms of structure and scale. It is the result of a few months of very late nights and aching hands.

Anyway, if you are in the Currumbin area, drop into Swell and look out for Lindy Davidson's work because it is always awesome.

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