Roger McFarlane
Despite visiting this sculpture in 2020 I write this post during our 8th week of Lockdown here in Sydney. While I appreciated the sculpture at the time it has a stronger pull and sentimentality for me now. I've rather enjoyed the lockdown and the time I've gotten to work on this blog with government financial assistance to keep us financially sound but some days I walk around my house and long for a day out exploring.
Everything about this sculpture including the moody sky really is on point for the days these four walls feel a bit much. My local lake is swamped with people all attempting to fill their day with some kind of freedom making it harder to ride my E scooter carefree. Last week a resident committed suicide there and words like Resilience have a stronger and more significant meaning.
The sculpture itself was a community project first proposed by the Association of the Relatives and Friends of the Mentally Ill's (ARAFMI) and was mostly funded by the community, $100,00 from local business' and $10,000 via crowd funding.
The $30k slab of marble was quarried in Greece and brought to Australia by ship. McFarlane spent 6 weeks chipping away at the slap in a public setting encouraging the public to come down and engage. The project was an initiate to increase awareness for mental health and I love the fact it was a public display, a public event and, now, very centrally positioned.
All parties did an amazing job bringing this project to fruition.
📍 Foreshore Park, Newcastle
Beautiful photo, I was in Newy this weekend and spotted this too is cool
ReplyDelete