James Rogers and The Sydney School of Sculpture
Mostly, sculptors don’t want to be identified with The Sydney School of Sculpture.
Sculptors quite reasonably would prefer to be separate entities unattached to a movement. They would like to soar above their peers to fly free, more alone than grouped.
Having said that, there is a link between several sculptors that is clear and needs to be acknowledged.
There is a strong thread the market and the art audience hide. This thread is so clear and evident, but we are culturally unprepared or reluctant to do so. We do not need to emulate our shy Australian mammal cousins however, who prosper in the darkness and the quiet of the night.
We need to declare ourselves. In the absence of sustained advocacy, this blog seeks to provide that.
Siren’s Song James Rogers Sculpture by The Sea Bondi 2025
James Rogers lives at Walcha, far from Sydney. He has built a strong independent visual language over forty years. Recently his progress has been acknowledged with awards at Sculpture by The Sea in Perth and Sydney and at The Wollombi Sculpture Festival.
Some of the sculptors, I include myself here, have not held that focus and have paid the cost by not building a language strongly and sustainably.
To wander here and there brings its own pleasures and rewards but sometimes at the expense of a stronger steady growth.
Sometimes sculptors emulate an idea of steady growth by developing a signature style. This is not the case with Rogers.
Unlike many sculptors Rogers shapes the steel. Through various means of heating and cutting he achieves a coherence as if the material was clay. Where the stickiness of clay induces the material to stay together, the strength of steel allows for space to open between parts. The pre-shaping of elements by cutting different types of steel pipe and plate beforehand brings a life not otherwise available.
This language available from building a process also needs to be enriched by a subject. Rogers makes reference to surfing, to the movements and changes this activity brings, but also the works are sometimes three dimensional evocations from paintings. They replicate the flow of paint, big suspended globs and lines moving quickly or slowly as the composition requires. The works also have the sense of being played as if heard as much as seen. The works of Sydney painter Ildiko Kovaks often come to mind.
On a purely formal level, Rogers achieves what all sculptors seek in their work, which is to get off the ground acceptably and to stay there for as long as possible. The object is to achieve a sustained walk around profile.
To achieve that without sculptural cliché is the sculptor’s objective.
When we, the sculptors, wander away from that objective we pay the price of stalled progress.
I won’t list here who the sculptors are who have wandered from their task, but those more reliably stay loyal to the task recently are Michael Buzacott, Paul Selwood, Orest Keywan, Jan King, Harrie Fasher, Leo Loomans and Paul Hopmeier.
Even without a strong market for sculpture, there are another ten sculptors who might be considered part of The Sydney School of Sculpture. From this writer’s perspective some sculptors do not consistently qualify because of a reluctance to shape the material, but rather attach isolated parts together to forge a union, in the manner of English sculpture.
Some of the sculptors are good for a show or two. They might make a standout work here and there. Sculptors often don’t acknowledge progress of others when it’s made, but even if they can’t or don’t, that progress sneaks into the collective work and keep the stream of progress alive.
The strength of sculpture’s lineage ironically, feeds off our reluctance to acknowledge it.
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Rogers is to be congratulated for not distancing himself from the nature of steel by painting it, by making it more ‘attractive’ to an audience. There is an argument that paint neutralises the material, to allow the shape full attention. Sometimes however, the paint is added like gift wrapping, to hide a ‘rusty, industrial look’.
With his recent works, Rogers has provided another strong link in the chain which is, the history of The Sydney School of Sculpture.