The Sculpture workshop is staffed by practising professional artists who have national and international reputations, and who actively maintain contact with other institutions, arts organisations and practitioners. Staff have a broad range of technical expertise and research interests, from practices based in traditional methods and skills through to performance and installation-based work. The Art Theory Workshop, ArtForum public lecture program, SofA Gallery, Foyer Gallery and Photospace provide additional stimulus from a wide range of visiting artists, crafts people and theorists.

Wendy Teakel
I grew up on a farm and have a deep-rooted attachment to the land. My most recent works attempt to express an insider’s view of the rural landscape through the disciplines of sculptural installation, drawing and painting. The farmer employs ingenuity to create "make-do" inventions to ward off impending disasters; a gate propped by a tree branch or roofing iron weighted with rocks serves the farmer's practical purpose and offers me a range of poetic strategies for my work.

Recently I have travelled extensively in Thailand and held a solo exhibition, Habitat (1999) at the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts Gallery, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. I have also spent time in outback Australia and in 1999 won the Outback Art Prize, at the Broken Hill City Art Gallery.

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Paul Hay
Paul's practice covers a number of trajectories including temporal works, performance, installation, and public sculpture. Paul Hay's research interests include the development of large works based on gestalt perception, the installation potentials of sculpture and the reworking of his performance work of the 1970's.

Before teaching full-time at the School of Art, ANU in 2004, Paul taught part-time at ANU and Curtin University. He has exhibited widely and received major public commissions.

Since 1975 Paul has received awards including grants from the South Australian and Western Australian governments, the Australia Council and Creative New Zealand. His work has been shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Experimental Art Foundation and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and he has participated in national and international exhibitions including Australian Perspecta and ARX (Artists Regional Exchange).

Since 1978, Paul has spent extended periods living in the USA, England, New Zealand and Indonesia.

Michael Le Grand (Visiting Fellow)
Michael is a sculptor whose interest in large scale, metal sculpture centres around formal issues and the physical aspects of the human and built environments. Recent work has focussed on issues of scale and placement in the landscape, exploring tensions which may exist between object and setting, and manufactured and natural environments.

In 1997 Le Grand was the co-winner of the inaugural Sydney Water Sculpture By The Sea. In 1998 he was awarded both the Capital Arts Patrons' Organisation Fellowship and the ACT Government's Creative Arts Fellowship, which allowed an extended period of studio research the following year. In addition to an active studio practice, Le Grand has also participated in the Canberra arts community at the policy level, on numerous steering committees and advisory boards, such as the ANCA studio complexes and Floriade. In 1999 he was on the selection panel for the University of Canberra Sculpture Commission, and in 2000 began co-ordinating the Sculpture Walk Project for SofA and the ACT government.

Current projects include solo exhibitions for Beaver Galleries, Canberra, and Defiance Gallery, Sydney, in 2000. He has also been invited to attend the Bad Laasphe Sculpture Symposium in Germany in 2000.

by Michael Le Grand

Nicholas Stranks
After graduating from the ANU School of Art in 1988, I worked at the Meridian Sculpture Foundry in Melbourne mainly casting large commissioned sculptural work. I returned to Canberra to undertake study in conservation and restoration of outdoor sculpture and worked on projects such as conservation of works in the collections of New Parliament House, National Gallery of Australia and Australian National Library. Since 1984 I have been employed in the Sculpture Workshop as the full-time Technical Officer, and also undertake a wide range of casting commissions and conservation consultancies. I have had involvement with a number of community arts organisations and committees, and regularly exhibit with Defiance Gallery in Sydney.

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by Nicholas Stranks