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Astroturf and steel, 100 x 178 x 230 cm
Montalto Sculpture Prize winner 2003, permanent collection
Low to the ground and upholstered in a dense layer of vivid green Astroturf, Clip reads like a hybrid between landscape, object and furniture. Three soft, leaf-like forms fold toward one another, creating a single sculptural gesture that feels at once organic and highly manufactured. Set within the Montalto landscape, the work plays a quiet visual game with the surrounding lawns and vines, echoing their colour while clearly belonging to the realm of contemporary sculpture rather than nature itself.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sebastian Di Mauro
Sebastian Di Mauro is an Australian artist of Sicilian heritage, born in Innisfail, North Queensland in 1955. He currently lives and works in Wilmington, Delaware, and holds a PhD from Griffith University, where he taught sculpture in the Fine Art program until 2016.
Working across sculpture, painting, artist books and large-scale installations, Di Mauro is known for his inventive use of materials and his interest in how cultural heritage, memory and place can be expressed through surface and form.
His practice often incorporates industrial or everyday materials, which he transforms into refined objects that sit somewhere between landscape, architecture and design.His work is represented in many of Australia’s major public collections, including QAGOMA, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Bendigo Art Gallery, Artbank, the University of Queensland Art Museum and Deakin University, among others.
SELECTED CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Over 45 solo exhibitions and more than 100 group exhibitions in Australia and overseas since the late 1980s.
Recipient of an Australia Council New Work grant (1999).
Winner of the inaugural Woollahra Sculpture Prize.
Included in the National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia (2001).
Residencies with Parks Victoria in Melbourne and the British School at Rome (2002).
Finalist in the McClelland Survey and Award (2003).
Winner of the Montalto Sculpture Prize, Mornington Peninsula.
Selected for the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award and Exhibition (2003, 2005, 2008).
Awarded the Australia Council Barcelona Studio and subject of a survey exhibition at QUT Art Museum (both 2009)
He has also completed a significant body of public art commissions, including major works in Brisbane, Adelaide, Ningbo and Suzhou, often developed in collaboration with architects and landscape architects.
DI MAURO AT MONTALTO
Clip entered the Montalto collection after winning the Montalto Sculpture Prize in 2003, joining a growing group of works that chart the evolution of Australian sculpture across two decades.
Within the Sculpture Trail, the work sits close to the ground, inviting visitors to encounter it as they walk. Its saturated green surface speaks directly to the estate’s lawns, vines and wetlands, yet its smooth, stylised contours clearly belong to a contemporary art vocabulary rather than the surrounding plant life.
In this way, Clip encapsulates one of the central ideas of the collection at Montalto: a meeting point between cultivated landscape and constructed form, where art heightens the experience of place without ever trying to imitate it.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Website: https://sebastiandimauro.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sebastian_di_mauro_artist/
