By arts editor Helen Musa

It was with a mixture of excitement and curiosity that I headed for the Sculptures in the Garden festival just outside Mudgee last weekend.

Held in the bucolic surroundings of Rosby Estate, the festival has added thousands of visitors to a region already well known to wine lovers. Founded in 2011 by Kay and Gerry Norton-Knight of Rosby Wines, it has become one of the most successful rural sculpture festivals in the country.

But could it be a prototype for something closer to home? I wondered.

With no fewer than 284 sculptures exhibited, all installed within a short walk of the central buildings, it was possible to see everything in a relatively short time, making for an enjoyable experience for the passing parade of travellers, many from north-western NSW, Sydney and the Hunter Valley.

A quick glimpse at the map shows how strategically positioned Mudgee is, and the festival buzzed with activity and conversation from people who might not normally attend an art exhibition.

Unlike some other sculpture festivals, such as the sadly missed Sculpture in the Paddock in the Yass region, Sculptures in the Garden has survived and thrived, no doubt because it was created by a group of passionate individuals. The Norton-Knight family shows no sign of slowing down.

Long-time director Kay has now handed much of the decision-making and producing to her daughter Amber. In a canny arrangement with Mid-Western Regional Council, larger works acquired through the festival’s acquisition prizes have been reinstalled in spacious Lawson Park Sculpture Walk in central Mudgee. What must have begun as a modest venture has become a permanent sculpture park adorning the town.

How would that look in Queanbeyan or Bungendore? I asked myself.

Inevitably, the biggest prize of the evening, the $30,000 SIG and Mid-Western Regional Council Acquisition Prize, went to a substantial work. Mudgee sculptor Michael Ferris took it out for River Bend.

Andrea Sardone, from Mandurang in Victoria, won the $10,000 Friends of the Sculptures in the Garden Prize for Walter, which will also be acquired for permanent exhibition in the region.

The $10,000 Fernside Pastoral Company Prize went to Bob Teasdale, from Bowning, for Penny For Your Thoughts, while the $5000 Buchanan Mudgee Hospital Prize, also an acquisition, was awarded to locally based French artist Louis Liens for Stone Drift.

Tammy Briggs, from Killarney Vale, won the $2000 Cameron Anderson Architects Merit Prize for Ground Colony, while Nicole O’Regan, from Hampton in the Central West, took out the $2000 Mudgee Region Small Sculpture Prize for her work in stone and steel, The Tracker.

Elen King, from Lawson, won the Sculptor’s Society Sensory Sculpture Prize for her tactile wool and wet-felted artwork Turning Point. First-time artist Beau Rohr, from Mudgee, won the Young Sculptor Achievement Prize for Aspiring.

Apart from Teasdale, several artists from the Canberra region and surrounding districts were represented, including Matthew Harvie from Murrumbateman, Thomas Westra from Moruya, Julie Brokenshire from Wilton, Edmund Willson from Bermagui, and Ulan and Rachel from Bega.

Much of the exhibition was sheer fun, with clever installations placing artworks naturally within the garden setting. Some entries involved the repurposing of found objects, including Moruya artist Thomas Westra’s Penny Pair and Penny Apple, made from old Australian pennies, and Roshelle McKillop’s Mother Hen, fashioned from galvanised chicken wire, copper and ceramics.

An indoor space provided a home for the Small Sculpture Prize, won by aforementioned sculpture, The Tracker, a tiny work paying tribute to Aboriginal trackers.

With food trucks and music adding to the atmosphere, entertainment was never far away. Canberra artist Ian Marr, whom we featured recently, demonstrated the art of carving stone.

Further down the large paddock as visible as people entered was the festival show-stopper, an inventive enterprise called My Kingdom for a Horse which invited visitors to pick up pieces of driftwood and add them to a growing stable of large-scale wooden horses. They jumped at it.

Sculptures in the Garden, Rosby Vineyard Gardens, 122 Strikes Lane, Eurunderee, Mudgee, daily until October 25.

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