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Donate
  • SWELL 2026
    • Festival Overview
    • What’s On
    • Artists
    • SWELL Smalls Gallery Shop
    • Awards
    • Partners & Sponsors
    • FAQs
  • Visit
    • Plan Your Visit
    • Getting Here
    • Accessibility
    • Maps
    • Accommodation
  • Get Involved
    • Donate
    • Partner With Us
    • Volunteer & Intern
    • Artist Applications
  • Projects
  • About
    • History
    • Our Team
    • Media
    • Contact
  • Artists
    • Artists
    • Artist Applications

Search SWELL Sculpture

Follow @swellsculpture

SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE #SWELLSCULPTUREFESTIVAL
#SWELLsnap2026 winner announced 📸 @nikolettaphoto #SWELLsnap2026 winner announced 📸
@nikolettaphoto for their winning shot depicting PEOPLE, ART & PLACE at SWELL Sculpture Festival 2026 - winning a family day pass thanks to our friends at @currumbinsanctuary

Thank you to everyone who entered for sharing your beautiful images! 🤩

Tell us about your SWELL experience & win a family day pass to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary 🔗 link in bio

SWELL connects PEOPLE, ART & PLACE

Sculpture: 'Reflections' by @_mabart_
Complete our short survey & win 🌊✨ Tell us how mu Complete our short survey & win 🌊✨

Tell us how much you loved SWELL!
Support us by filling out a short survey (roughly 3 minutes) and go in the draw to WIN a Family Day Pass to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary!

Link in bio 🔗

Your valuable feedback helps us to understand the impact of our festival for the community- thank you for taking the time to support SWELL and the Arts 💙

SWELL connects PEOPLE, ART & PLACE

Sculpture: 'Big Bang Cluster' by @andre.sardone.art
Image: @ravelbrandmakers
#SWELLsnap2026 closes Sunday! 📸🌊 Take a photo that #SWELLsnap2026 closes Sunday! 📸🌊
Take a photo that depicts PEOPLE, ART & Place at SWELL 2026 for your chance to win a Family Day Pass to @currumbinsanctuary 🐨

Upload them to Instagram by 11.59 pm on Sunday 27 September, making sure you:
• Tag @swellsculpture
• Hashtag #SWELLsnap2026

Sculpture: ‘Medusa’ by Angus Wilson
Image: @ravelbrandmakers
SWELL Sculpture Festival 2026 Awards 🏆 Congratulat SWELL Sculpture Festival 2026 Awards 🏆
Congratulations to our artists, and thank you for voting for your favourites!

$15,000 SWELL Sculpture Neumann Family Award @neumannsteelaustralia 
Clayton Blake @claytonblake.art - ‘ASCEND’

$5,000 SWELL Sculpture Neumann Family Highly Commended Award @neumannsteelaustralia 
Tom Pall - ‘The Weight of Consciousness’

$5,000 SWELL Sculpture People’s Choice Award supported by Southern Gold Coast Chamber of Commerce
Guy Humphries @guy.humphries.92 - ‘Driftwoody’

$3,000 Environmental Awareness Award supported by by Max Fabre Foundation
Jessica Miglioranza @jessica.miglioranza.art - ‘Migaloo’

$3,000 SWELL Kid’s Choice Award supported by Eco by Sonya @ecobysonya 
Mick Brown @mickbrown666 - ‘Nipper the Lifesaver-saurus’

$2,000 SWELL Sculpture Young Artist Award supported by Arts Gold Coast Foundation @artsgoldcoastfoundation 
Ajay Thomas @recalibrate.public - ‘Melting Man’

$2,000 Jennie Neumann OAM Emerging Artist Award supported by Jennie Neumann OAM
Oliver Mabbutt @_mabart_ - ‘Reflections’

$2,000 SWELL Sculpture Artist Peer Award supported by Beach n Beyond, Currumbin Beach Vikings SLSC, Salon de Sel, Will & Bear @beachnbeyondboutique @currumbinbeachvikings @salondesel @willandbear 
Tom Pall - ‘The Weight of Consciousness’

$1,000 SWELL Sculpture Indigenous Art Award
Kyle Slabb @_taylorgreen_ - ‘Ngagambi’

$1,000 SWELL Smalls Gallery People’s Choice Award supported by Usher Group @theushergroup 
Tom Pall - ‘The Weight of Consciousness’

Valued at $300 SWELL Sculpture Somerset Storyfest Artist Statement Award @somersetstoryfest 
Dion Parker @holyshititsdion - ‘One Small Step’

SWELL Sculpture After Dark Award
Harmony Linthorne @harmonylinthorne.art - ‘Morning Star’

A huge shoutout to our fabulous Award sponsors for their ongoing support 💙🩵💙

SWELL connects people, art & place

Image 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11: @room4graphics
Image 2, 9: @lex_imagery
Image 5: @ravelbrandmakers
Image 6: @melissawells_xo_
Salute to the Sun by Patricia Piccnini @patricia.p Salute to the Sun by Patricia Piccnini @patricia.piccinini

Salute to the Sun continues my long fascination with the boundary we draw between the natural and the artificial — and how readily that line dissolves once you look closely. This new bronze sculpture is a chimera, seamlessly moving between deer, tree, fungus, human and motorcycle. It evolves out of a machine base into an organic form whose arms, or perhaps antlers, unfurl like budding leaves.

The pose comes from the sun salute and from the way plants quietly rotate to face the light. I love that it stands on a beach, an obvious artificial construct, yet entirely at home in that archetypical natural place. Its materiality also reflects this: Bronze is mostly copper, a metal that was laid down in the earth eons ago, but shaped entirely by the manipulation of elemental fire by human activity.

In earlier work I looked at imagining machines with the tenderness, balance and yearning of living things. These machines are the wild creatures of a world where we are all intertwined with technology. ‘Salute to the Sun’ presents a creature of modern mythology: an hybrid chimera drawing its energy from the sun, more vulnerable than threatening, asking us where we fit into this world.

SWELL Sculpture Festival 2026
11 - 20 September, Currumbin Beach to Flat Rock, Tugun
View the full program and plan your journey online at swellsculpture.com.au 🔗

Make your SWELL adventure a breeze with our FREE Park & Ride running daily 9AM-5PM from 164 Duringan St, Currumbin to Currumbin Beach 🚌 @currumbinvalleycoaches

Image by @lex_imagery
Rota Fortunae by Emily Hastie @emilyrosehastie Ro Rota Fortunae by Emily Hastie @emilyrosehastie

Rota Fortunae visualises the role of chance in life's most defining outcome: where on Earth we are born. Fortuna, ancient deity of chance, blindly holds out her hand to reveal a fate on the spinning wheel. Around its edge sits the true distribution of global population, drawn from current United Nations data. Australians are only ~0.34% of that population, yet inherit stewardship of a megadiverse country home to 10% of Earth's known 
species, over 80% found nowhere else on the planet. Such extraordinary fortune begets equal responsibility.

SWELL Sculpture Festival 2026
11 - 20 September, Currumbin Beach to Flat Rock, Tugun
View the full program and plan your journey online at swellsculpture.com.au 🔗

Make your SWELL adventure a breeze with our FREE Park & Ride running daily 9AM-5PM from 164 Duringan St, Currumbin to Currumbin Beach 🚌 @currumbinvalleycoaches

Image by @lex_imagery
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