Cultural Capital’s Cathy Drew and Mark McClelland were commissioned to create a public artwork for the Bay Pavilions – Arts + Aquatic in Batemans Bay. They won the bid with a sculptural placemaking work designed to be used as a meeting and seating place.

Rockpool focuses on human scale and comfort to enrich the lived experience of place. The result is a discreet work that rewards close interaction, providing pleasure with its graceful shape, tactile surface and usability — the work’s continuous looping form acts as a gathering place outside the main foyer and can seat up to a dozen people.

Conceptually, Rockpool is influenced by local geography. The texture of its surface is cast from coastal rockpools of the Eurobodalla region and the work suggests carefree time spent exploring rockpools, that liminal zone between land and sea at the edge of the solid world.

Responsive to the tide, rockpools are exposed and submerged in an unending natural cycle, suggested in the continuous looping form of the work.  Programmable lighting is employed to create a tidal effect: a slow rising and falling of internal lighting projecting out onto the surrounding ground plane through penetrations in the sculpture. External lighting renders the sculpture as a projection surface, transforming its static state with a new emotional language.

The artists opted to make the work in cast aluminium complementing the timber of the building’s architecture with a material that projects a sense of solidity while also being capable of capturing great delicacy and detail.