Richard Goodwin is a world-recognised and multiple award-winning sculptor and architect. He is a specialist in art, architecture and urban design, and Professor in the School of Art, School of Design Studies at the College of Fine Arts (COFA). He recently delivered the Tom Bass Memorial Lecture.
In the late 1970s Goodwin had a studio in Chippendale and he met Tom Bass at his nearby Broadway studio. With a long history of making sculpture in the urban context, Bass played a key role in fathering the difficult relationship sculpture has with architecture. Goodwin said: “The experience of visiting Tom Bass’s studio was humbling and sublime at the same time. Truth via the body, through the hand, and in the hands of a master.”
Goodwin was quite young when Oz magazine immortalised Tom Bass’s P&O Wall Fountain (copper, 1962-63) by referring to it as a urinal. “Little did they know how complimentary this comment might now be perceived, as I and others judge this work as the first major sculpture in Sydney to ‘bite’ into the very skin of architecture and make the building a subject of itself. I still consider this work to be one of the most important public artworks in Australia and a personal source of inspiration to my own practice, which seeks to make the skin of architecture the site for new parasitic propositions,” he said.
Tom Bass’s sculptures can be found in many parts of Australia, including at Melbourne and Sydney universities, and at Erskineville Public School – a wonderful Rainbow Serpent. They are a great heritage of his artistic skills and placed so they can be enjoyed by many people.
However, one of Tom’s most lasting legacies is the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School. Originally it was in Broadway, but has now been at 1a Clara Street, Erskineville, for many years. To celebrate the 40 years of teaching, an open day was held there in June.
I have no doubt that many people, like myself, who had learned sculpture from Tom, were delighted to visit the studio and connect with wonderful memories of his teaching. I had never tried any sculpting and Tom’s way of giving people a start was beautifully designed. We had a lump of clay and could work away in our own time as we tried to give life to our imagination. Tom would wander around as we did this and give enlightening and encouraging advice.
As we received this advice, we never felt diminished or patronised. He would look at what we were doing, talk gently with us about what we were trying to achieve and then give us the feeling that anything was possible.
In receiving three terms of his teaching, by the final term, I realised at last that if I freed up a bit and allowed my artistic imagination to be more creative, rather than simply producing a literal version of something, I might be a real artist. When we finished our clay sculptures, they were cast in plaster and coloured so that they looked more like stone. This was a wonderfully imaginative and inexpensive way of helping amateurs to produce their vision of things.
On the Studio Open Day, you could see a number of present pupils working on their sculptures in both clay and stone. The strength of Tom’s legacy in teaching is that anybody can participate in the classes and feel affirmed and creative. You don’t have to have any qualifications – just an enthusiasm for having a go. It is Australia’s oldest sculpture studio school.
When you think that Tom Bass was one of the most distinguished Australian sculptors of all time, it is amazing to recognise what he was offering into the community at large, in an area where all sorts of people lived, and still do.
