South Pambula artist Jen Mallinson to feature in Bondi's Sculpture by the Sea outdoor exhibition

Her sculpture, titled Adaptation 22, will be on display at Tamarama Beach, located 1km south of Bondi Beach in Sydney.

People in the Bega Valley might be familiar with Ms Mallinson's previous work, including her sculpture on the pedestrian pathway in Littleton Gardens in Bega called The meeting of two rivers.

After three application attempts, Ms Mallinson was finally selected to feature her work at the coveted Sculpture by the Sea - the world's largest annual free-to-the-public outdoor sculpture exhibition featuring artists from all over the world.

Due to COVID, the event has been on hold the past two years, with Ms Mallinson confirming she was first selected to feature in the exhibition in 2020.

Her 13-piece blue gum inspired sculpture will be on display at the beach from October 21 until November 7. The significance of the 13 trees came from the fact there were 13 new moons in 2022.

The sculpture is made of corten steel, with dimensions of 510 x 350 x 350cm and has already caught the attention of potential buyers, with a Queensland buyer already in touch about a sale.

The whole process started at a workshop in Bodalla, where Ms Mallinson worked to create the piece.

"Every leaf was plasma cut by hand by me and then rolled and formed to create the nice curves. Then they were welded all together on their stalk.

"Every leaf is different on the piece, just like every leaf on a tree," she said.

Ms Mallinson said "thank goodness it didn't rain" during the installation process that began on Tuesday, October 18.

The sculpture was loaded onto the back of a car trailer from a Bodalla workshop.

A small convoy left the South Coast at 7am and arrived in Sydney after a couple of wrong turns along the way that led them straight into the middle of the city.

When they finally arrived at the beach, an excavator towed the trailer right onto the beach, an impressive feat given there were only inches to spare between the walls of the walkway leading to the beach.

The excavator dug a 3x3m hole in the installation space.

"We put the base together, put that in the hole, it's pegged down by big star pickets on either corners and there's formed ply on the base of the steel - so it's quite a big steel construction the base.

"It all has to be engineered to withstand strong winds and all of that," she said.

Once the base was in, levelled, and bolted, the poles were put in and bolted into place. The base was then covered in a few tonnes of sand to keep it balanced and in place.

Then each tree piece was picked up by the excavator on a sling and maneuvered into place.

After taking a drive around fire ravaged locations on the Far South Coast after the Black Summer bushfires, Ms Mallinson was taken aback by the regrowth on the gum trees.

She was inspired to create her sculpture after seeing the juvenile regrowth on the trees with little leaves "exactly opposite each other" on either side.

Is was a shape she said she had been interested in recreating for quite a while, inspired by blue gum, and had started working on that concept on a smaller scale a few years ago.

"The idea behind this sculpture is that it's a gridded base and forms basically a 3x3m cube at the base.

"That represents our straight way of thinking and conformity, and the world as it has been.

"When it goes up into the more organic trees, it's like we need a new way of thinking to deal with everything we're dealing with in the last few years and the world - like with climate change.

"This concept was created before COVID as well, but that reinforced it to me."

Ms Mallinson said she wanted it to invite "a different way of thinking" and encourage people to look at things "from different perspectives".

She said viewers were able to walk in between the trees "like a forest" and could look up and see the canopy above with the leaves overlapping, otherwise people could look down from the roadway.

"It looks different from every perspective," she said.

Get our daily headlines and breaking news alerts in your email. Sign up below