While lots of art is inspiring to look at, pieces that allow the audience to be a part of it can often have more impact.
That’s certainly something that mother and daughter sculptors Evie (the mum) and Tania Ferrier have put into practice at this year’s Sculpture by The Sea at Cottesloe with their interactive sundial sculpture.
Many will be familiar with Tania’s work as a prominent contemporary Australian artist known for fiercely feminist, socially engaged work spanning painting, installation, video, and her Angry Underwear project.
Angry Underwear is an iconic feminist art project created by Tania in 1988 while she was working in New York. The project began after Tania witnessed the sexual assault of a stripper in a Brooklyn club, prompting her to create a form of art as armour.
Tania hand-painted bras and underwear with fierce animal faces — teeth, eyes, snarls — designed for strippers to wear on stage as a performative act of resistance. This became a media sensation.
Celebrities including Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Lauren Hutton, Reno and Odetta owned Tania’s pieces, although her exhibition in Perth in 1989 was briefly shut down because it was deemed obscene.
Tania and Eve have been working on the sundial sculpture for about two years.
The seven by five metre sculpture has 13-time markers, numbered 6am to 6pm.
It has a disc in the middle of a semicircle where people can stand any time in March and the shadow that person throws will tell the time.
“The person becomes the part of the sundial that casts a shadow. It’s called the gnomon,” said Tania.
“The two-year creation was partly because Sculpture by the Sea was put off for one year. But two years ago, Eve asked me whether I would collaborate with her on making this sundial.
“It’s something she’s wanted to do for a long time. And we put in the application and it was accepted for what would have been last year, but then last year was cancelled. So, we were automatically rolled over into this year.
“That gave us two years to create the work, which was good because it was a lot of work.”
The pair say it’s impossible to say how many hours of work they put into the sculpture.
The tower is made of terracotta pots, just like those we all have in our gardens, upended to create a tower.
“Four large pots and one small pot on top. There’s structural engineering on the inside of them that you don’t see, of course. There’s a pole that goes into the ground with a plate on top and then another pole that comes up from the ground at that point,” Tania says.
“The pots are threaded onto this pole. They all stand about 1.4 metres high, and the 13 towers are 1.4 metres high.
“Evie has done all the mosaic. That’s her art form. She’s a mosaic artist. And she has used black and white tiles to mosaic the towers.”
The mosaic work was the biggest time consumer.
And Tania took on all the admin, which she says was huge and the structural engineering side of it in terms of liaising with a person who created the interior structure.
This is Tania’s fourth Sculpture by the Sea.
“Evie and I collaborated together in 2001 on a shark woman.”
It was essentially based on her Angry Underwear project.
“The shark woman came from that project. Evie collaborated with me on that one, but that was my idea. This time round, I’m more working for Evie,” Tania says.
The pair work easily together Tania says.
“This is her idea and I’m working for her. We both do what we are best at.”
“Yeah. Although Tania’s more creative,” Evie chips in. “Anyway, it works because I’m not good at all the admin, all that stuff.”
Evie is the mosaic expert. Her house is entirely mosaiced, both the outside and the inside walls. It’s been featured on a lot of TV shows, magazines and books.
The human sundial sculpture will be one of 70 sculptures on Cottesloe Beach, near the groin.
While many of the artists have created expensive pieces Evie and Tania say their work is not a really high-end product.
“We generally try to find a way that you’re not spending $25,000 to make your sculpture. We are finding creative ways to make structures. And in this case, the terracotta pots form the main body of this work.
“The intention is also to let people see that they could make this themselves.”
Evie and Tania are already thinking about what they might do next year.
They are considering building towers using crockery, like vases.
Evie says sundials have been around since about 340 BCE.
“They have been around for a long, long time, but I think the fun part for this is that it is the person who must stand there to cast the shadow.
“It’s easy for them; all they have to do is stand on the slab. As long as it’s between 6am and 6pm, their shadow will cast in the direction of one of the towers.
“And on the towers, there’s Roman numerals, which will tell you whether it’s 10am or 11am, or halfway between 10am and 11am.
“The disk is specifically for March. If you want to use the sundial all year, other plates must be made, telling you where to stand for January, February, March, and so on.”
Sculpture by the Sea will run from March 6 to 23 at Cottesloe Beach.
