MYSTERY surrounds how a $40,000 sculpture on loan to the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre was knocked over and damaged between Christmas and New Year.
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The work, entitled From Dartbrook to the Reef, was installed outside the Artiste café, next to the Muswellbrook Police Station, in July.
Sculptor Dave Teer, who grew up in Dartbrook and went to school in Muswellbrook and Aberdeen, first produced the work for the internationally-recognised 2008 Sculptures by the Sea exhibition in Sydney.
He now lives in Cronulla and exhibits privately commissioned and public sculptures across Australia.
Mr Teer’s mother, Valda, told the Hunter Valley News she first noticed something was wrong between Christmas and New Year.
“The sculpture was in place and okay on the Monday morning,” she said.
“The next day, on December 30, we went to a funeral at Beresfield and when we came home, we drove under the subway and I looked to my right and I noticed the sculpture was on the ground with red fencing around it.”
Sure enough the yellow metallic artwork had been knocked, or pushed, from its moorings where it had been solidly anchored with reinforced steel pins.
Some of the metal was bent and paint had been scraped off, but there was no graffiti on the sculpture.
Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre manager Brad Franks reported the damage to police and Muswellbrook Shire Council workers transported the sculpture to a council depot.
Mr Teer, who studied Fine Arts at Wollongong TAFE and is a boilermaker by trade, told the Hunter Valley News he hasn’t inspected the work yet to see if he can repair the damage.
“It took me five weeks to build From Dartbrook to the Reef, but it took my family many years to collect the materials for the work,” he said.
“Most of it is made from farm machinery, bits of steel plate and individual pieces of scrap iron we gathered around the local area.”
He said he’s happy the sculpture is back in Muswellbrook, even though it appears to have met with foul play.
“You don’t make work that will appeal to everybody, but at least it gets people talking because I think art is really just an expression of the everyday and I hope people would be curious about it and not fearful,” Mr Teer said.
“There’s a good community of artists in this area and the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre is a wonderful asset for the town.”
Campbell Robertson-Swann is the Director of Defiance Galley, the Sydney-based gallery that’s been exhibiting and promoting Mr Teer’s work for 15 years.
He said he was very disappointed to hear the news.
“We only found out a few days ago and it really is quite odd,” he said.
“Dave is a very talented and seriously committed artist and some of his work is exhibited overseas, he has public work on display in Woollahra and Paddington and he’s been commissioned to do private pieces.
“It’s really good for a small country town to have public art and Muswellbrook is lucky to have Dave Teer’s work.”
Mr Robertson-Swann said he hopes the mystery surrounding From Dartbrook to the Reef is solved and the sculpture can be repaired and reinstalled for Muswellbrook to continue to enjoy.