Icebergs take flight
Joel Adler will once again be exhibiting at Sculpture by the Sea and has been named as one of three recipients of the Helen Lempriere Scholarship.
Joel Adler has spent the past year designing sculptural homewares for Melbourne-based homewares and fragrance label, Tsu Lange Yor. Created by musician Troye Sivan and his brother Steele, the company name is Yiddish for “to long years” and is a celebration of home, family and living good long years. Adler said it has been an amazing journey and he looks forward to continuing as head of design with the company.
This is, of course, alongside his creative art practice, which this year, once again, includes exhibiting at Sculpture by the Sea and being named as one of three recipients of the Helen Lempriere Scholarship.
Since moving to Melbourne, the Sydney-born artist said it always feels special to exhibit near his family and friends.
For 2024, Adler will be presenting Zephyr. While he acknowledges his previous works – Viewfinder and Lens – were quite interactive, Adler explains that Zephyr is less so.
“Zephyr is more of a ‘sculptural sculpture’, if that makes any sense,” he told The AJN. “The 3D forms, based on scans I took of icebergs in Svalbard, Norway drove the shape and structure of the work. Having said that, I spent a lot of time thinking about how people will orbit the work at the site.”
Adler spent three weeks on a boat in Norway as part of the Arctic Circle Art and Science Residency, sailing up to the northern icecap, walking on icebergs and hiking around glaciers. It was a calm unlike anything Adler had ever experienced.
“The name of this sculpture, Zephyr, means a light breeze, it popped up in a book I’ve been reading called Arctic Dreams,” he explained, sharing the story of how the residency influenced the sculpture.
“In the minus-15 temperatures we experienced, a gentle breeze can be the difference between a pleasant walk and a freezing cold hike. The idea behind the work imagines the gentle yet powerful breeze lifting the icebergs, freshly carved from the nearby glaciers, swept into the sky to escape their fate. The icebergs I watched and 3D scanned on that residency would likely have melted by the summer months, so this work tries to immortalise them by lifting them off the horizon into the sky.”
As for the scholarship, Adler said it’s a huge push in the right direction for him as an artist.
“I’m really thankful for being selected. The scholarship will allow me to travel to Chile next year for the La Wayaka Current residency. It will be three weeks in the desert with other artists and locals and I plan to capture more 3D scans in the unique desert landscape.
“I’ll also be upgrading some of my studio equipment so I can push the materials and format of my work further. And I’ll be doing a glass casting course in a couple months thanks to the scholarship.”
Sculpture by the Sea will run from October 18 to November 4 in Bondi.
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