For the 21st time, Swell Sculpture Festival will take over the beachfront in Currumbin this September.

Over the past two decades, the exhibition has become a synonym for a fantastic selection of art and artists, as well as creating connections and bringing art to the community and an iconic Gold Coast location. One of the most anticipated parts of the exhibition has always been the emerging artists it introduces. We have had the privilege to take a sneak peek at what this year has to offer and choose our favourite emerging artists you don’t want to miss.

Bella Deary; The Symbiont

Bella is a Meanjin-based visual artist promoting the equality of all life forms and responding to environmental issues such as climate change through her large-scale installation and video artworks. 

The Symbiont is an inflated vinyl sculpture resembling an enlarged coral polyp. The sculpture is embellished with spots resembling coral’s symbiont, zooxanthellae algae, which appear to disappear throughout the day as the sculpture inhales, exhales, and daily temperatures fluctuate. Corals expel zooxanthellae algae when marine temperatures rise, and conditions become inhospitable, resulting in the coral’s loss of colour and ability to photosynthesise. 

Despina Linaraki and Brice Pannetier; The Radical Materiality of Oystertecture: Emerging atmospheres

Despina Linaraki is an Architect engineer and an academic researching nature-based solutions for the adaptation of low-lying islands and coastal cities to sea-level changes and floods through the interdisciplinary of architecture and ecology. Brice Pannetier, then again, is a French-Australian Computational Designer with a Master in Architecture degree and a passionate advocate for sustainable and climatic-driven architecture.

In The Radical Materiality of Oystertecture, they use discarded oyster shells to reinvent the boundaries and challenge the traditional notions of what is possible in design, construction and materiality in art and architecture.

Jobella Bennett; Octopus Dreaming

Jobella Bennett is an emerging contemporary wire art sculptor. She uses chicken wire as her medium and bends, moulds and weaves the wire into sculptures that express her and her love for nature.

Through Octopus Dreaming, Jobella explores the graceful and mysterious nature of these fascinating creatures and the interconnectedness and fluidity of life itself. The sculpture reflects the octopus’ ability to effortlessly navigate its watery environment, evoking a sense of movement and vitality.

Glen Duncan; The Seabed

“My art career began at 6 am one Sunday morning six years ago with the words, ‘I have to go build a fire-breathing dragon’.” This is how Glen Duncan has described the beginning of his artistic career, and he had us hooked. 

His goal is always to create something that draws the audience in to take a second look or inspect more closely to reveal the hidden elements that make up the whole. He works with interactive large-scale sculptures that often have a kinetic aspect to engage the audience physically.

In The Seabed, the fish have made their home in a 19th-century bed and given it a second chance at a useful life. The wind provides the motion of the elements while the sun provides the energy to the luminous paint and after-dark lighting. 

Lachlan Hegarty; Golden Ground

Lachlan Hegarty has devoted his artistic endeavours to creating sculptures that encapsulate the wonder of natural phenomena. Drawing upon his background in the art of timber boat construction, Lachlan incorporates intricate pattern-building construction techniques to create organic forms that capture the essence of the natural world. 

Golden Ground explores the harmonious complexities and wonders of the biosphere and highlights the intricate underground mycelium network through the embodiment of golden mushroom blooms. 

Lyn Haddons; Blue Butterfly Effect

Lyn Haddon is an artist working in contemporary jewellery, sculpture, installation, and public art.

Her work speaks of society’s impact on nature and individuals, including the Anthropocene, eco-anxiety, and material preciousness. She represents nature in very unnatural ways and addresses dark themes without the darkness.

Blue Butterfly Effect consists of hundreds of metallic butterflies resting peacefully in seaside foliage, recharging in the sun. Sensing the presence of passers-by, the butterflies light up and begin to flutter their wings representing how our individual actions may seem insignificant, but collectively they can have an enormous effect on our environment.

Matthew O’Connor; Jarriparilla Nugum ‘The beginning of the end’

Matthew O'Connor is a local Indigenous artist who identifies with Kombumerri of the Gold Coast, Mulunjali from Beaudesert and the Ngugi tribe of Moreton Island. Through his experience with Swell, he hopes to learn and develop skills to pass on to the community through the Yugambeh Aboriginal Museums and encourage other Indigenous artists.

In Jarriparilla Nugum ‘The beginning of the end’, Barney the dingo sees first contact through the eyes of a dingo that lived on the Gold Coast over 200 years ago. His innocence was lost as his habitat diminished along with so many other native species, including the Kombumerri tribe itself. Barney was top of the food chain on the Gold Coast but could not survive the invasion of his lands. 

Nadine Schmoll; Living Together

Nadine Schmoll is an artist and educator whose multi-disciplinary practice combines art and science to create sculpture, photography and wearable art. She explores how humans can learn from nature to build more mutually beneficial relationships between ourselves and the world. 

Living Together is a homage to symbiosis, a biological relationship found in corals, made collaboratively with the community. The artwork embodies a colony of larger-than-life coral polyps with algal pigment fading over time through exposure to sunlight, just as corals lose colour when their symbiotic algae are expelled. 

Sean Winter (in collaboration with 20 students from Robina State High School); Palmy Macks

Sean Winter is an experienced Industrial Technology and Design teacher at Robina State High School. He has collaborated with his design, engineering, and construction students and fellow teachers and has incorporated curriculum elements into real-life design challenges. He aims to raise awareness of the threat to fish stocks and the fishing industry and wants to influence his students and audience to reflect on the challenges currently impacting marine environments with constructive, positive dialogue and responses.

Palm Beach Reef is the largest coral reef system on the Gold Coast and one of the best local spots to target and catch mackerel. New fishery management arrangements for Spanish mackerel have been introduced since October 2022, helping to restore depleted stocks and protect jobs in the fishing industry for future generations. Through Palmy Macks, the audience is encouraged to reflect more broadly on the plight of fish stocks locally, nationally and globally.

Sophie Gilbert; Méduse

Sophie Gilbert is a New Caledonian artist using abandoned materials to refer to despoiled lands, pollution, injustice, discrimination, abuse and the absence of love in the world. Confronted daily with anthropogenic waste in the Pacific Islands, she assigns the abandoned materials a new function by using them as the primary source of material for her work. 

Méduse represents an age-old, natural organism once considered 'The Lung of the Ocean'. The focus is on oceanic toxic contamination and the vital role jellyfish will play in the filtering of microplastic nanoparticles. This translucent sea creature may have no brain, blood, or heart, but it represents hope, despite destructive human activities that do environmental harm.

Visit swellsculpture.com.au for more.