Calling Upon the Owl

180cm x 200cm x 120cm

Salvaged Automotive plastics, aluminium frame,

stainless steel fastenings

2017

Calling upon the Owl was created to enter in the 2017 Sculpture at Scenic World Exhibition hosted every year at Scenic World in Katoomba, Blue Mountains NSW. The sculpture was selected and exhibited and was awarded the Staff Pick award and was showcased in the Sydney Morning Herald as one of a few standout pieces.

Regal Retreats Pty Ltd. purchased the piece from the exhibition and after the exhibition I permanently installed it at the Mistere Spa & Retreat in Urliup, Northern NSW.

Accompanying the piece was this below statement; 

Finding stillness in an accelerating world compels us into wild places.  

This instinct to seek out wilderness is a yearning for guidance, 

a yearning for simple natural order & pace.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished - Lao Tzu 

Encountering the gaze of an owl’s eye will stop anyone dead in their track.

There is comfort in it but it is also simultaneously confronting.

It says “ I’ve got my eye on you “ whilst also saying “ but what is your place here in this forest?”

Are we passive observers detrimental to its survival or are we deeply and inherently connected to this wilderness? 

The use of salvaged car bumper bars to construct this sculpture has within it a larger metaphor.

The car parts are a symbol of the slick out of control speed of modernity  However each of the bumper bars used in the sculpture has been involved in a prang or crash.  A moment when this symbol of speed has slammed on the brakes and come to a grinding holt.