I AM All Abilities Sculpture is temporarily located at Geelong Waterfront.
A striking large-scale text-based public sculpture has found itself a home on Geelong’s Waterfront, celebrating members of the Greater Geelong Community who have a lived experience with disability.
Commissioned by the City of Greater Geelong, the sculpture, titled I AM will be temporarily located on the forecourt of the Carousel, Eastern Beach until February 2022 and is a deep dive into disability arts from our region, and a space to showcase its creative and cultural history.
The key takeaways
- A new sculpture has landed on the Geelong Waterfront
- I AM is a large-scale text-based public sculpture, celebrating members of the Greater Geelong Community who have a lived experience with disability
- The sculpture will be located on the waterfront until February 2022
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The public art sculpture is the spectacular result from artist Mark Cuthbertson who worked with artist-collaborators Robert Croft, Hannah Wilkinson, Christian Den Besten and George Macaronis, based on over 85 contributions from the local community living with a disability through a series of artist-led workshops.
The resulting text-based works were curated by the artists and cast into the side profile of the I AM letters.
“It has been a true pleasure as an artist bringing the I AM project to the Geelong community. I would like to thank my fellow artistic collaborators and the broader community members for their involvement and contributions to the work, what an amazing outcome,” Cuthbertson says of working with collaborators.
Drawing reference from powerful political and pop culture statements such as the 1968 Memphis black sanitation workers slogan “I AM a man”, and Helen Reddy’s 1971 anthem “I AM woman”, the work celebrates the empowerment of diversity in our society.
Funded by the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund (CSF) and delivered in partnership with VALiD (Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals with Disabilities) and Geelong-based ArtGusto, the sculpture stands over two metres and is designed to be relocatable throughout the municipality.
The sculpture is interactive by design, inviting you to be a part of the work. You can position yourself within and take photos (using the hashtag #IAMGeelong) that will form a collective voice celebrating the diversity of our local community.
Deputy Mayor Trent Sullivan, Chair of the Council’s Creative Communities and Culture portfolio, congratulated all participants on their part in the sculpture’s development.
“This is an engaging and important piece of public art that reinforces our belief that everyone in the Greater Geelong community is welcome and brings their own unique value,” Cr Sullivan said.
“Mark, Robert, Hannah, Christian and George have done an outstanding job creating the finished artwork from the excellent contributions of so many community members.”
Celebrating the contribution of all people of all abilities to the community, a huge congratulations to the many people in Geelong’ all-abilities community who have worked for so long to make this artwork a reality.
