Art Together with Lucy Irvine

For the Cressida Campbell public program, in summer 2023, local sculpture and textiles artist Lucy Irvine led a collaborative woven sculpture project.

Lucy Irvine led a series of creative workshops with the community to construct an ephemeral sculpture. Community was at the heart of this project. One of the challenges was how families or friends worked together and then how they connected their section with another group’s section, requiring collaboration and at times compromise to achieve a cohesive form.

Taking the shape of a long, tangled tube, Irvine described the sculpture as a visual representation of the creativity that artists carry with them. As a child, Cressida Campbell enjoyed walking and drawing in the bush with her mother. This fostered a lifelong sense of wonder and creativity that has shaped her artistic practice. Inspired by Campbell’s journey as an artist, the sculpture twisted a path through the National Gallery Sculpture Garden. Filled with a sense of childish wonder, participants imagined where the sculpture might curl up, rest, think and where it might journey. These ideas informed to the documentation of the sculpture in several locations throughout the Sculpture Garden.