The Fremantle Shipping News is a big supporter of the local arts. Every second year we look forward to and feature Sculpture@Bathers that turns Bathers Beach into an open air sculpture gallery.
The organisers this year boasted the event would highlight ‘bold installations, intricate sculptures and thought provoking pieces’.
It was therefore with a mixture of amazement and disappointment that we learned leading, local J Shed artist, Greg James had had his bronze Gaia sculpture rejected for the event.
The impressive $66,000 sculpture is of a nude Gaia – the Greek Goddess of the Earth, the mother of all life.
Greg Iames’ Gaia sculpture. Credit Peter Zuvela Photography
The curatorial team of Sculpures@Bathers 2025, effectively deemed it too racy for public exhibition on the beach. Really? It’s 2025, not Victorian England!
Sandra Murray, who took responsibility for the event’s decision, was quoted on Channel 7 TV as saying it wasn’t the nudity that was the problem but the ‘grossly exaggerated sexualisation of the female form.’
Here’s the sculptor with Gaia in his J Shed Bathers Beach studio.
Greg James is without a doubt one of Western Australia’s best bronze sculptors. These are just a few of his sculptures around Fremantle and Perth –
* Bishop Matthew Hale, St Georges Terrace, Perth
* Bon Scott and The Fishermen at Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour
* Maitland Brown, Esplanade Park, Freo;
* Pietro Porcelli, King’s Square, Freo.
Not to mention the fabulous Bella, who we featured on the Shipping News recently, who sits quietly, without any censorious comment, at the southern end of the Bathers Beach boardwalk.
Is Bella now to be censored too?
S@B will run at Bathers Beach from April 4-21 without Gaia.
Go, or don’t go, as you choose.
If the censors had an ounce of good sense, and a modicum of entrepreneurial judgement, they’d reverse their decision without delay, observe the umbrage the public have displayed towards their censorious ways, eat a little humble pie and ask Greg James if he would be kind enough to allow Gaia to be exhibited after all.
We will no doubt soon find out just how stubborn the censors are.
One thing’s for sure. If they did reverse course, and Greg James did allow Gaia to be exhibited after all, the organisers would get the best turn up to the event they’ve had in years!
By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News and Jean Hudson regular S@B reporter
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READERS’COMMENTS
We at FSN don’t claim to be perfect. And we’re not. In this piece we expressed our view on Gaia and her worthiness to be in the S@B 2025 exhibition. We appreciate that some may and do agree with the reported ‘sexualisation’ comments of the Curator of the exhibition. There are many comments on our Facebook page. Here we post our readers’ comments emailed to the Editor.
From Alan Payne
Dear Editor
Your 26 March article ‘Too Racy? Really?’ on the Greg James sculpture is poor journalism.
Why didn’t you interview or get a statement directly from the Sculpture at Bathers organisers?
And maybe consider the entry standards that have made ‘Sculpture at Bathers’ such a terrific and renown exhibition. Greg James is a fine sculptor, but whether this particular entry was conceptually refined and innovative is an open question, and the judges are entitled to make the call.
Instead you went for the crude sensationalist angle, as no doubt other media will do.
Regards
Alan Payne
