Inside Sculpture by the Sea’s four-day scramble to save its exhibition

Four days before Sculpture by the Sea opened to hundreds of thousands of visitors, founder David Handley was told one site was at risk of “giving way”.

The lookout from Marks Park, now cordoned off by yellow signs saying “do not enter”, was deemed unsafe by a team of independent geotechnical consultants after rockfalls in Bronte and Bondi triggered the closure of part of a walkway between the eastern suburbs beaches.

“Together with council, we agreed that, with using an abundance of caution, we wouldn’t put sculptures or have people go on to the lookout this year,” Handley said.

He said one of the safety concerns was of the lookout “giving way”.

“It may be safe for hundreds of years, but no one really knows. So we just wanted to be careful and sensible and not take that risk given these two huge rockfalls in the last 15 months.”

This concern, in addition to a shipment of eight sculptures from Japan that was late due to the typhoon season and a boat carrying a Slovakian sculpture catching on fire, plunged the organisation into a last-minute scramble.

Organisers knew about the possibility of delayed sculptures and a geotechnical assessment shutting down the lookout, but both were confirmed four days before the exhibition opened to the public.

The cliff verdict forced the organisation to pull out Plan B and reshuffle six sculpture locations.

“You can’t put any old sculpture next to each other; they have to fit comfortably next to each other,” Handley said. “[We had] sculptures coming in on schedule and still installing those, while working out how we’re going to rearrange the exhibition to take into account the delays and confirmation that we couldn’t have a sculpture on the lookout … It was a challenge.”

While rockfalls are an omnipresent threat along most Sydney coastlines, they are rare and unpredictable by nature, said Bruce Thom, emeritus professor of geoscience at the University of Sydney.

“It is not something we can predict, or something we can say will happen tomorrow,” Thom said.

“Bondi has Hawkesbury sandstone, which are big blocks that fall at the top of the cliff, and they may fall from a combination of different causes, including waves, spray and rainwater infiltrating into the cracks of the rocks and weakening the cohesion among the rocks.

“The walk goes along the [Bondi] cliff, and it’s basically a safe walk, but we have these incidents. Cliffs are there for a reason; they have been attacked and deformed. That’s how they exist.”

Waverley Council said drone surveys of the entire coastline identified a defect in the rock overhang beneath the lookout at Marks Park in September, prompting the closure of the lookout.

“Following safety advice and out of an abundance of caution, taking into account the weight of vehicles and machinery required for the installation of an artwork … coupled with anticipated high visitation numbers ... Council made the decision to close access to this particular viewpoint,” council said in a statement.

But for Handley, securing a $200,000 lifeline from corporate donors amid budget shortfalls three weeks from the event was more challenging than the reshuffle.

“The big worry was the financial,” he said. “Reshuffling where we put in sculptures – that issue was a bit more than normal. The real challenge was financial.”

The exhibition ends next Monday.

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