2018 Exhibitions
Marble: an exhibition by TBSSS students
14 November 2018 - 25 January 2019
Marble: an exhibition by TBSSS students, as the title suggests was a group show of marble sculptures, created by students who attended one of our intensive marble workshops run by guest artist and teacher Alnassar.
Exhibiting: Helen Alajajian, Gabrielle Allam, Terence Cole, Carol Crawford, Sam Eller, Margaret Fitzgerald, Chantal Lawrence, Dominque Lett, Anna Pedersen, Elisabeth Thilo, Alichia van Rhijn and Bridget Whitehead.
2018 Director’s Choice Exhibition
24 September - 31 October
The Director’s Choice Exhibition featured sculptures that were selected from the 2018 Annual Studio Exhibition by Chair Carol Crawford and Board Member Margo Hoekstra.
The exhibition featured TBSSS students: Penny Bobbin, Mark Bortolozzi, Barbara Castagna, Bree Cribbin, Dinah Davis, David D’Silva, Sam Eller, Sue Eller, Alison Ewings, Allison Garoza, Marianne Halmos Rein, Bob Hamilton-Foster, Ian Kennedy, Dominque Lett, Gretchen Miller, Anthony Mitchell, Arielle Morris, Elena Murgia, Noriko O’Leary, Robert Pratten, Paul Rovali, Jennifer Stokes, Janne-Ann Tainsh, Martin Williams.
The winner of the 2018 Prizes were:
Director's Choice Prize: Elenga Murgia - Runaway.
AGNSW Highly Commended Prizes: Robert Hamilton Forster - Pablo's Tears and Barbara Castagna - Grace and Acceptance.
People's Choice Prize: Anna Pedersen - Dancing Inside
2018 Annual Studio Exhibition
24 September - 28 September
This year, the renowned Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School celebrates twenty years as an independent sculpture school in Erskineville. Founded in 1974 by totemic sculptor Tom Bass AM (1916 -2010), the school moved from Broadway to Erskineville in 1998 and has never looked back.
On Sunday 23 September, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore opened the 2018 Annual Studio Exhibition. This much-anticipated show was a celebration of the work created by our students and sculptors in the last year and 116 sculptures were on display!
This event was kindly sponsored by The Rose of Australia.
Monika Scarrabelotti: An exhibition of recent works
23 July - 5 September
This exhibition featured six figurative sculptures by 2018 Tom Bass Finalist Monika Scarrabelotti. Monika joined the TBSSS teaching team in July 2018 and teaches and on Thursdays at the Studio.
Bio
Monika Scarrabelotti began teaching with the sculpture department at the National Art School in 2017. She received a Bachelor of Fine Art in sculpture at NAS in 2013 and recently completed the Masters of Fine Art program at the same school. Specializing in the figure, Monika has spent the last few years fine-tuning skills in traditional and contemporary techniques of clay modeling, ceramic sculpture, mold making and casting.
In the years between studying Monika spent substantial periods of time traveling in Europe and Asia to develop her artistic practice and pursue a further understanding of art history and sculpture around the world. During her travels in 2015 she participated in land art and sculptural installations in Berlin, Germany for various art, music and lifestyle festivals. In early 2017 Monika was selected as one of eight finalists in Gosford Regional Gallery’s Emerging Art Prize, resulting in a huge debut solo exhibition titled The Sensuality of the Sculpted Figure.
In September 2017 she participated alongside high profile artists such as David Eastwood, Alan Jones and Robert Hague, in the unique and exclusive exhibition 9 Hours Underground. Curated by artist agent Kate Smith, the exhibition was held deep beneath the Sydney Opera House, in a beautiful and atmospheric cave.
Monika’s work was received with huge enthusiasm and sold out in the first night at the NAS Post Graduate Show in November 2017. In December 2017 she was invited to participate in a ceramics residency with Art Est in Leichhardt, resulting in the exhibition Future Masters.
More recently Monika was accepted as a finalist in the 2018 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Art Prize, where she also taught several life drawing classes amongst the sculptures in Juniper Hall. Other highlights of Monika’s budding career include working with sculptor and lecturer Jim Croke on a recreation of Rayner Hoff’s destroyed sculpture The Crucifixion of Civilisation (originally intended for the Hyde Park War Memorial) for the Rayner Hoff: Art and Life exhibition and book launch in early 2017.
Monika will begin teaching at Tom Bass Sculpture School in July 2018 and is very enthusiastic to bring her skills and knowledge to the school and be a part of the Tom Bass Sculpture community.
When not teaching Monika devotes her time to working in the studio. Influenced by neoclassical sculpture, and the tumultuous works of Rodin, Monika’s sculpture is an exploration of sensuality, emotion and the human condition.
Carol Crawford: there is a blaze of light in everything
21 June - 15 July
"This exhibition is a mini retrospective of my body of work – it embodies me in sculptural form.
It all started with Genesis I, seen in the exhibition in bronze from 2010 - free flowing light and air and the feeling of nurturing and support are integral to this sculpture – this sculpture was created at a time of great emotion for me, and to me conveys so much comfort and love.
Alabaster became my obsession from around 2010, with small sculptures – why alabaster? because of the quality of the stone and its translucency (or not) and also because I am attracted to the fact that it is formed in the ground as ‘eggs’ or nodules – it is my connection with the stone that gives birth to the forms. I listen to what the form is telling me, and work slowly, attentively. I enter another world when I carve - which is mostly done by hand filing and hand polishing. I am innately connected to each sculpture. They are part of me, and I am a part of them.
Despite the ‘faults’ in many of the alabaster sculptures, they are full of life and vitality – nothing in life is perfect, and they are more ‘real’ for this attribute. There is a blaze of light in everything."
Bio
Carol Lehrer Crawford in an artist practicing in Sydney, Australia. She has been creating sculptures for over 15 years in a variety of materials including bronze, plaster, wax, marble and alabaster. She is recognised for her organic and sensuous curvilinear forms. Carol has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions and has been a finalist in the Tom Bass Prize 2018 & 2016, Harbour Sculpture 2017 & 2015, Northern Beaches Art Prize 2017, Warringah Small Sculpture Art Prize 2016, Sculpture at Sawmillers 2016 and Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 2016.
Carol has completed several public commissions including two portraits for the Cootamundra ‘The Captain’s Walk’ in country NSW, and has various works in private collections within Australia and Germany (Berlin).
She holds a BA from the University of New South Wales, and has also studied Fine Arts (theory) at Sydney University.
Examples of her work can be seen on her website www.carolcrawfordsculpture.net
Bernice Lowe: An exhibition of figurative sculptures
13 May - 10 June 2018
Bernice has been a senior teacher at Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School since 2005.
Bernice’s artistic practice spans over twenty years. In 1989 she discovered Tom Bass and his ‘atelier’ Sculpture School in Broadway. The meeting was a pivotal moment igniting Bernice’s passion for sculpture.
Bernice has a deep appreciation of classical sculpture; it is from this discipline that she finds inspiration for more abstract and contemporary sculptures. Rhythm, gesture and movement are dynamics expressed in Bernice’s sculptural works. Her work explores the sublime and haptic world of form and harmony, her sculptures invite the eyes and the senses in from the mundane, to stop, linger a while and to just enjoy.
Daniel Dominguez: INTER LEGARE - to choose between
25 Feb - 2 May 2018
Making sculpture, like all creative processes, comes down to two principle actions, breathing in and breathing out. When we breath in we open our senses to the wonder that surrounds us. When we breath out we let go of our senses and follow an idea through to its end.
As in a breath these two actions operate in perfect accordance with each other and yet also operate as adverse opposites, one providing the tension that agitates the other into action.
It is the intelligence to choose between these modes, however, that ignites the spirit of creativity, fundamental to the success of all great enterprises.
Daniel Dominguez is a figurative sculptor, modelling chiefly in clay and casting into plaster and bronze. Following a formative training under Tom Bass in the 1990s, he went on to work in the tradition of his beloved master, completing civic sculpture for community organisations across the country (for much of the last 30 years). In addition, Daniel has exhibited his bronze editions extensively through commercial galleries and is often in demand for private commissioned work, most notably portrait sculpture.
In recent years he has also set up a drawing school, believing drawing to be the essential grammar behind the visual language of sculpture.
