Photo: Artist Brian Campbell with his latest work, an echidna bound for Thargomindah.
Local artist Brian Campbell has made yet another fantastical creation: a three-and-a-half-metre-long echidna sculpture which is destined for Thargomindah in the Bulloo Shire of Queensland.
The larger-than-life sculpture is wire netting, with a nose and toes made from black poly pipe and eyes made from a poly ball float.
While he doesn’t keep an official log of how much time it takes to construct one of his sculptures, Brian says he began making the echidna at the end of January this year and has completed it quite recently.
The echidna has more than 200 individually made quills, each of which has approximately 14,000 cuts by hand with side cutters.
The echidna has uncharacteristically large eyes, shaped to give him a kinder look, which Brian says is about maintaining a balance between accuracy and artistic licence.
“We’ve got to get it authentic, but it also needs to have some character,” he says.
In his past life, Brian was a rodeo cowboy and a welder, but after his retirement he began making sculptures following a little nudge from Gulargambone artist, Alison Dent.
She had an artists’ concept for a team of bullocks made of wire netting, and rang Brian asking to use his name as a ‘temporary’ name on a grant application. But when the grant was approved, Brain was left with his name down, and ended up being the one to make the statues.
“She conned me into it,” he joked, but admitted that he loved the process of learning how to turn a roll of netting into an animal or human.
“It’s always unknown territory until you start,” he said.
Brian has made over a dozen sculptures since he began netting in 2018, including horses with and without riders, a bandicoot, bullocks, and a bilby which sits in the Michael Birth Lawn at University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Tourism and Marketing Co-ordinator at Bulloo Shire Council Danielle Tuite said she found out about his work after completing a tour through Sturt’s Steps at Sturt National Park in Tibooburra, NSW where she saw a sculpture Brian made of famous Australian explorer Charles Sturt next to his horse.
“I just thought they were really interesting so we reached out to the rangers to see who made it,” said Danielle.
“They’re just really well made, and they’re quite unique. They’ll never be repeated.”
“Depending on which Indigenous dialect is spoken, Thargomindah means ‘cloud of dust’ or ‘echidna.’
“So with the echidna side of things within our marketing at the Visitor Information Centre here.”
Brian says he has appreciated having plenty of free rein with this latest commission and has learned a lot about echidnas along the way.
His advice to young artists is to embrace the process of creation.
“Don’t worry about how good you think you should be, just enjoy making it.”
The echidna will be moving to its permanent home in Thargomindah, Queensland next month.