Artist Geoffrey Ricardo has been toiling away in a Sunshine foundry hand-making eight giant sculptures for the Kororoit Creek Trail.
The celebrated artist says he’s spending six days a week holed up in Fundere Fine Art Foundry to ensure the 3.3-metre tall figures are completed before his July deadline.
He first makes the steel frames, then coats these with resin and mesh. Eventually, each piece will weigh as much as 300 kilograms and have an outer marble shell.
In September last year, Hobsons Bay council awarded Ricardo a $330,000 commission, funded by Toyota Australia, to produce the public art works for the Altona North trail.
The Brooklyn resident says each figure represents a “spirit” of the creek-side landscape, walking or pausing along its banks, a “ reflection and discussion of the many things we are as human beings”.
The sculpture with an armful of birds (pictured) is “a guardian of the creek”. It holds Indigenous birds that have returned since the Friends of Kororoit Creek began rehabilitating the waterway.
“There’s the planes flying overhead,” Ricardo says of the figure leaning back, its face tilted to the sky. Each sculpture will have a poem at its base, written by an Australian author about the work.
