Couta sculpture sails on memory’s horizon

In 2017, the Lorne Men’s Shed advertised a competition to design a sculpture based on an abstracted couta boat, once used for fishing in the seas around Lorne.

Tony Wolfenden, a British-born designer and Lorne resident, won the competition and developed a piece titled Couta Memory.

The sculpture consists of 19 vertical panels of marine-grade ply, epoxy coated and separated by brass spacers.

The form mimics and plays with a repeating shape of the hull of a classic couta fishing boat and creates an aperture where audiences can observe landfall as though looking through a telescope.

“The interplay between positive and negative forms is intended to evoke and express the loss of these iconic working boats that previously graced the pier at Lorne,” Tony said.

Fascinated by kinetics and currents, Tony is pre-occupied with the building of model working yachts and exploring the sculptural forms of these wind driven crafts. Couta Memory is an extension of this obsession.

When the Lorne Men’s Shed began thinking about building a couta boat sculpture for their Lorne Sculpture Biennale entry, Tony was also thinking about marine history.

“I had for some time been contemplating making work loosely inspired by maritime forms, so that the competition for the design of a couta boat sculpture fitted well with my current practice of model yacht building,” he said.

“I became interested, and developed a range of ideas to explore and create an abstraction of these beautiful but practical working craft. It has also renewed a long past interest of mine in making sculpture.”

The Lorne Sculpture Biennale will run from March 17-April 2.

The Lorne Men’s Shed sculpture can be viewed along the Sculpture trail at site two.

For more information, head to lornesculpture.com.