For a couple of months, Lyndarum Estate residents in Wollert have enjoyed a fresh view of the skyline in the form of three golden sun moth sculptures.
Once widespread in Victoria, the moth is found in only a handful of habitats, giving the estate’s developers, AVJennings, reason to champion them as an asset.
“They serve as a reminder that we need to work hard to conserve our environmental heritage,” Whittlesea mayor Stevan Kozmevski said at the sculptures’ unveiling.
For artist Benjamin Gilbert, the recognition of a threatened species is in keeping with his ecological ideals. “Being quite green-oriented I was pleased with this outcome,” he says.
The moths are up to four metres high and are made from stainless steel offcuts from an interstate processing mill. They took Gilbert and a fellow sculptor more than a month to complete.
“I wanted to make pieces that were accessible and you could interact with,” Gilbert says. “They’re robust enough for kids to climb on them and get that intimacy. It’s not trying to copy nature or be a totem, it’s just to catch your mind and from there you extend your own thought.”
The moths are Gilbert’s second sculpture commissioned by AVJennings for the estate. Several 12-metre tall dianella – or matted flax lilies – were installed last year to draw attention to the fact that the plant, once common in the area, is also threatened.
Gilbert says he has a responsibility as a public sculptor to be mindful of the audience. “You don’t need dramatic pieces and they don’t need to be super detailed,” he says. “It’s a little bit predictable but that’s fine, it’s a housing estate, not an art gallery.”
The award-winning sculptor makes upwards of 20 pieces a year and after working everywhere from Estonia to Russia, now heads his Agency of Sculpture business in Yackandandah. Although he began his career as a furniture designer, he is mostly in demand for his sculptures made using everything from timber and metal, to stone and ice. Commissions come from landscape architects, estate developers, schools, governments and theatres. Princess Mary of Denmark was so taken by his Humpback Gunship sculpture, it is now in the permanent collection of Denmark’s ARoS Contemporary Art Museum.
Gilbert can’t help but smile at his success. “I managed to fail sculpture in university, which is hilarious, because now I turn over more than my whole sculpture department.” ¦
