During July and August this year, Canberra was undoubtedly the place to see sculpture. Most would assume that this comment refers largely to the National Gallery of Australia’s ‘National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition’ with its record number of participants and most generous allocation of prominent National Gallery space to date. However the ‘Dimensions Variable’ Contemporary Sculpture Festival held at three Canberra institutions went, in some ways, beyond the Sculpture Prize’s boundaries, particularly in its exploration of contemporary sculptural possibilities through focussed yet receptive exhibition themes.
Hosted by Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, and the Australian National University’s School of Art Gallery, Dimensions Variable was premised on demonstrating and investigating a multiplicity of sculptural practices. Each of the distinctly separate exhibitions worked within their articulated curatorial position, teasing out their particular inquiry and explorations. Though at times bound by the limitations of the individual exhibition spaces, the festival in its entirety worked towards its aim, as stated by curators Barbara McConchie and Lisa Byrne: ‘to broaden awareness of what sculpture has come to mean in the twenty-first century’.
Fundamental to Dimensions Variable were notions of place and space. Developed as a response to Canberra’s substantial sculptural heritage, it was explicitly sited within this historiography—architecturally prominent national institutions and monuments, governmental commissioning of sculpture and public art, and a legacy of sculpture forums and specific art events which have shaped the field of sculpture in the city. This placement, clearly articulated in the accompanying publication, is important not only because it relates to an exploration of a particular trajectory, and an investigation into the possibilities of sculptural practices, but also as it acknowledges and utilises the strengths