Lorne’s Sculpture Biennale returns this weekend

A VIBRANT festival celebrating the best of contemporary Australian and international sculpture, the Lorne Sculpture Biennale (LSB) begins this Saturday.

The 2016 event attracted 65,000 visitors to Lorne’s picturesque foreshore to partake in a vibrant program of events, with this year promising to deliver the same.

The free event runs until April 2 with works inspired by this year’s curatorial theme, “Landfall”, exploring pressing global issues of nature and endangerment.

Incoming curator from The National Gallery of Australia, Lara Nicholls, said 41 artists will use the medium of sculpture(including light, sound, performance, and projection) to explore this theme and the intersection of nature, humanity, and art.

“What’s been fascinating is that we’ve been attracting a lot of international and interstate artists where as it was quite Victorian-centric in the past,” she said.

“These sculptors have been amazing and many are already in Lorne getting ready to install for the opening or finishing off pieces with many never having shown in Australia before.”

Ms Nicholls said they decided to move the festival from the long weekend to March 17 after those travelling down just for the show struggling to get there.

“With the show previously opening over the long weekend in March people attempting to come just for the exhibit had to turn around after getting caught up in traffic jams – we think it’s the right decision because opening the weekend after, they’ll be able to get through easily and engage.”

She said there’d been fantastic community involvement with the Lorne Primary School alongside various locals involved in planting and maintaining a fabulous garden in Erskine paddock.

The garden is part of The Living Stage, a recyclable, biodegradable, edible and bio-diverse installation and performance space; part theatre, part garden and part growing demonstration featuring a portable plant-lined stage of suspended botanical sculptures.

Works by well-known Australian sculptor and new media artist Sonia Payes will be unmissable with her piece, Littoral echo, consisting of four big heads (five metres by 1.5 metres) to be buried in the sand and joined by eight smaller heads.

For a full program itinerary and more information go to lornesculpture.com.