There is something particularly moving about seeing a sculpture you made more than twenty-five years ago being cared for and given a new life.
My two large bronze sculptures, Lola Black and Lola Pink, have recently undergone conservation at Canberra Museum and Gallery, where they are installed in the garden at the entrance to the museum.
The photographs sent to me by Assistant Curator Vanessa Roth show the process beautifully: the bronzes being heated, their colour restored and the surfaces protected before being returned to the garden, which itself has been substantially replanted and developed over the past year.
The conservation of the two works required quite different approaches. The pink and red tones of Lola Pink were recreated using Dye-Oxide Patinas from Sculpt Nouveau. Lola Black received a traditional potassium polysulfide patina, applied after the bronze had been heated with an LPG torch. Once the colouring was complete, both sculptures were heated again and coated with microcrystalline wax to protect the surfaces.
Seeing that process takes me straight back to the beginning of the Lolas.
The first Lola appeared in 1999 as a painted wax and plaster wall sculpture in my exhibition Towards the Baroque at Annandale Galleries in Sydney. The exhibition was subsequently reviewed by Bruce James in The Sydney Morning Herald.
The idea developed into a group of four monumental bronze flowers, each based upon a different petal and each given an individual colour.
The name came, of course, from The Kinks’ “Lola.” The works were never intended simply as enlarged decorative flowers. I was interested in the ambiguity contained within the flower itself: something intensely beautiful and apparently feminine, yet with its central male reproductive structure held within and surrounded by the petals. Ideas about female friendship, sexuality and gender were all quietly present within the sculptures.
In 2000, the large Lolas were exhibited at Floriade in Canberra.
Lola Black subsequently spent many years in the Japanese Garden at Campbelltown, giving the sculpture a public life quite separate from my own. Both works were also later shown at Orion Sculpture Park in Yass, the seven-acre sculpture garden I created with Stephen Hooper.
In 2012–13, Lola Black and Lola Pink entered the collection of Canberra Museum and Gallery through the Australian Government Cultural Gifts Program.
And now, more than a quarter of a century after the bronzes were made, they have entered another stage of their lives.
I have always liked the fact that bronze survives us. Its surface changes, weather acts upon it, people encounter it without knowing anything about the circumstances in which it was made, and eventually somebody else takes responsibility for its care.
These photographs make that continuity tangible.
The garden around the Lolas has matured too. In the final photographs the sculptures no longer appear simply to have been placed outside a building. They sit among tree ferns and dense planting, their enormous petals almost becoming part of the vegetation.
That seems particularly right for them.
Selected history
1999
First Lola, painted wax and plaster, exhibited in Towards the Baroque, Annandale Galleries, Sydney.
2000
Large bronze Lolas exhibited at Floriade, Canberra.
Subsequent years
Lola Black installed for many years in the Japanese Garden at Campbelltown.
Orion Sculpture Park, Yass
Lola Black and Lola Pink exhibited within the sculpture park.
2012–13
Lola Black and Lola Pink acquired by Canberra Museum and Gallery through the Australian Government Cultural Gifts Program.
2026
Conservation and repatination followed by reinstallation in the museum entrance garden.
