^{Robert Stackhouse’s On the beach again 1984 is located in the Gallery’s Sculpture Garden. Nestled among the rushes, Stackhouse’s sculpture rests on the shore of the Marsh Pond within the Summer Garden, which was conceived as a respite from the blazing sun and heat of an Australian summer’s day. The work appears to be the flattened hull of a boat, or a raft, resembling an unearthed Viking burial ship, sitting half in, half out, of the water. Whether the boat has just arrived or is ready to depart on a journey is ambiguous.}

On the beach again was commissioned from the artist specifically for the garden. While the form of the work is related to earlier pieces, the way in which the work was to be installed―the first of Stackhouse’s ‘boats’ to actually touch the water―meant that On the beach again was also the first time the artist had a work cast in bronze. It was cast in Taiwan from a full-size model constructed of recycled timber and driftwood, then shipped to Australia and installed in 1984.

Recalling the work, Stackhouse outlined:

For On the beach again, I used the lozenge shape, the eye/boat shape of my work, and it had this random, overlapping, serpentine element. At first, I did not know for sure if it was an object, or a being. In fact, I learned, it was both … a structure but one with this sense of an organic quality to it … This is about ending a journey. It is where I try to deal with the architectural and the organic at the same time … The title, On The Beach Again, was an escape clause for me. Because, I recall, I was once asked by Jack Burnham if I ever thought about beaching my boat. And I replied that all my art was about the journey. There was no destination. If I ended the journey then I might not make art anymore. I was required to put one of my sculptures half on land and half in water. By calling it On The Beach Again I meant to suggest that it had already been there. I could resolve the issue for me, because it was not the end. It was like the ferry to nowhere; it can’t be resolved. And, of course, On the Beach Again [sic] was the well-known book about the end of the world.^[1]

At the time the sculpture was commissioned, the Sculpture Garden was in its early stages of growth and it basked on the bank under the summer sun in an expansive setting, which is evident in photographs taken at the time and suggested in a number of the artist’s drawings for the work.^[2] The casuarinas around the small lake have grown over the past three decades, so that On the beach again now occupies a cool shaded spot as was first envisaged―a ‘journey’ for the work itself and its shifting dialogue with the environment it inhabits.

Steven Tonkin

^[1] Robert Stackhouse, quoted in J Richard Gruber, Stackhouse, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, 1999, pp 86, 87–9.

^[2] See early photographs of On the beach again in the Sculpture Garden in J Richard Gruber, Stackhouse, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, 1999, p 87.