To the memory of Col James, Paul Pholeros and Linda Garland, for their unending support and inspiration.
...A woman whose son has gone on initiation and her close kin expressing sympathy and support by surrounding her with branches called a “Wildtja� - Thanks to Paul Memmott for his inspiration and research.
If one person dreams alone... It is only a dream. When many people dream together... It is the beginning of a new reality. Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Art
Sculptures & Installations These artworks all began the same way - by walking through a bamboo forest with friends, harvesting the culms that will give form to an idea. The concept behind each work is as simple as the techniques used to build it, yet complexity emerges from the scale and sheer number of elements. Just like the forest, the experience of these works is enveloping, immersive and tactile. We look for a direct relationship between the site of the installation and the hands of those who create it. From harvest to completion, the nature of the material governs the making and the process is as meaningful as the artwork itself. For us, community engagement is key to every project. We try to establish a public connection to the work through education from the beginning.
Golden Hour
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, 2016 Sunrise and sunset are twins in spectacle but strangers in meaning. This paradox of the sun begins and ends with a golden hour on the horizon. In a single day, the sun heralds renewal and extinction. The bamboo sphere is balanced at the edge of the headland overlooking iconic Bondi Beach, aligned with the horizon. Tension mounts as we wait for the magical moment where a golden disc touches the line between sea and sky. The sculpture invites viewers to step inside and experience this twice daily phenomenon through a filter of woven bamboo.
Exhibited: Sculpture By The Sea, Bondi 2016 Dimensions: 3m x 3m x 3m Location: Sydney, Australia Lead Artist: Juan Pablo Pinto Team: Jed Long, Nici Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Lachlan Brown, Seb Guy, Ned Long Engineering: Event Engineering
Photo by Dylan Kim
SAVE OUR SOULS
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, 2014 Save Our Souls is a meditation on the lighthouse in contemporary Australia. Once essential for safely guiding ships to shore, the lighthouse is now a technological relic. This effigy embodies the duality of the lighthouse, signalling both welcome and warning for seafaring travellers to Australian shores. The redundancy of the lighthouse addresses a shift in Australia that is all at once technological, cultural and political.
Photo by Gareth Carr
Exhibited: Sculpture By The Sea, Bondi 2014 Private Collection: Yabby Lakes Vineyard, Mornington Peninsula Dimensions: 12m x 3m x 3m Location: Sydney, Australia Lead Artists: Lachlan Brown, Juan Pablo Pinto, Jed Long Team: Nici Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Ned Long Engineering: Event Engineering
Mengenang
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, 2012 Mengenang (memory in Balinese) is a bamboo wind-driven sound installation, inspired by the ‘tok-tok’ of the traditional bird scarer used in Balinese rice fields. The bamboo resonators are tuned to a D minor chord to create a commemorative sound forest. The original installation of the sculpture was created to reflect on the bombings that occurred in 2002 and 2005 in Bali. The 222 victims were each represented by a singing bamboo pole on the headland. Mengenang was awarded winner of the People’s Choice and Mayor’s Prize at the 16th annual exhibition Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2012. It also won People’s Choice at Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe WA 2013
Photos by Brent Winstone
Turkey feather Bamboo propeller
Shaft tube Shaft Hammer
Bamboo resonator Macadamia nut ball-bearing Mast Bamboo pole
Exhibited: Sculpture By The Sea (Bondi 2012 + Cottesloe 2013) Artisans in the Garden 2013 (Sydney Botanical Gardens) Dimensions: 8m x 15m x 20m Location: Sydney, Australia Lead Artists: Lachlan Brown, Juan Pablo Pinto, Nici Long Team: Jed Long, Ned Long, Alice Nivison Engineering: Event Engineering
Regenesis
ART + CLIMATE = CHANGE Festival, St Kilda, 2017
Regenesis evokes a cocoon or chrysalis that has opened at one end. In response to the festival’s focus on climate change, the sculpture explores the transformative power of a natural cocoon inserted into an urban setting. Visitors are invited to climb inside and inhabit the intimate, nest-like environment. The sculpture gives time for contemplation and transformation. Like larvae transformed into butterflies, the sculpture evokes notions of change and transformation. Regenesis was exhibited for one month in Acland Street Plaza, St Kilda; it was then relocated to Melbourne’s Gasworks Art Park for an extended exhibition.
Exhibited: Art + Climate = Change 2017, St Kilda, Melbourne Extended Exhibition: Gasworks Art Park 2017-2019, Melbourne Dimensions: 3m x 6m x3m Location: Melbourne, Australia Lead Artist: Juan Pablo Pinto Team: Mercurio Alvarado, Seb Guy, Jed Long, Max Volfneuk Engineering: Event Engineering
Bower
Sculpture at Barangaroo, Sydney, 2017 Bower is a smudge on the horizon, a hatch traced in the air with charcoal. Inside, an intimate cradle from which to observe the natural landscape of Barangaroo. The feminine qualities of the nest acknowledge the Eora tribal woman whose name is given to the park. The artwork creates a cave for reflection; an opportunity to inhabit the view. It invites the passers-by to climb in and settle. The living womb and the enveloping charred exterior signify forces of renewal and extinction in the primordial landscape.
Exhibited: Sculpture at Barangaroo, Sydney 2017 Private Collection: Cranbrook School, Sydney Dimensions: 9m x 3m x 3m Location: Sydney, Australia Lead Artist: Juan Pablo Pinto Team: Mercurio Alvarado, Seb Guy, Jed Long Engineering: Event Engineering
Bliss
World Whale Conference, Hervey Bay, 2019 The moment a baby Humpback calf is born somewhere in the warm waters off North Queensland, it comes out tail-first and swimming, weighing about as much as a family car and suckling up to 600 litres of mother’s milk per day. The pair stick close together as they begin a 5000km journey south to Antarctica. With not even a quarter of this maiden voyage completed, they cruise into the warm embrace of this giant north-facing bay and stay for weeks.
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For mother and young, we see in their exuberant displays of breaching and tail-slapping that this isn’t simply a crucial time for gaining strength and skills but also a blissful one. We are lucky to be able to witness it. If there is a place that could be described as sacred in the 50-year, million-kilometre lives of Queensland Humpbacks, surely Hervey Bay is it.
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Exhibited: World Whale Conference 2019 Dimensions: 6m x 3m x 4.5m Location: Hervey Bay, Queensland Lead Artist: Juan Pablo Pinto Team: Mercurio Alvarado, Lachlan Brown, Seb Guy, Jed Long Engineering: Partridge
TRANSIENCE
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, 2019 Long before we realised that we all live on a sphere, human beings have been beguiled by bubbles, whether singularly launched into life on the breath of children or violently blown onshore in great drifts of ocean spume. In the arts, the bubble endures as a symbol of the transience of existence, while in science its form is extolled as the perfect consolidation of efficiency and strength. A conglomeration of large woven bamboo domes inspired by nature, Transience invites exploration of this exquisite juxtaposition inside and out. At scale in a new landscape, the sculpture is a re-imagining of the beauty of bubbles that sweep to shore on every wave. This project was kindly sponsored by the Transfield Australian Invited Artist Program
Exhibited: Sculpture By The Sea, Bondi 2019 Dimensions: 4.5m x 20m x 15m Location: Sydney, Australia Lead Artists: Juan Pablo Pinto, Lachlan Brown Team: Jed Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Seb Guy, Max Volfneuk Engineering: Partridge
Near Kin Kin
Art + About, Sydney, 2015 This 24m tall sculpture was selected for Sydney’s Art and About Festival. The tower draws its name, inspiration and materials from a hillside farm near Kin Kin, Queensland – where giant stands of bamboo invoke awe in anyone who stands beneath them. It was first exhibited on the forecourt of Sydney’s Customs House and then relocated to the Woodford Folk Festival precinct in Queensland, where it now stands as a central landmark.
Exhibited: Art + About, Sydney 2015 Private Collection: Woodfordia, Queensland Dimensions: 24m x 6m x 6m Lead Artist: Juan Pablo Pinto, Lachlan Brown Project Leaders: Jed Long, Nici Long Team: Mercurio Alvarado, Seb Guy, Ned Long, Alice Nivison Engineering: Event Engineering
Festivals
Pavilions, Venues & Temporary Installations Festivals are places where all visitors expect the unexpected - they are unique spaces for the exploration of art and design beyond the conventional. Festivals balance the need to maintain traditions and familiar attractions with an injection of the exotic, the breathtaking and occasionally the ridiculous. It makes them perfect playgrounds of invention, where the taking of creative risks is the rule rather than the exception. Perpetual renewal calls for constant creativity and re-imagination - an opportunity to explore the juxtaposition between the ephemeral and the permanent. Bamboo fits neatly into the cycle of these cultural celebrations as the ideal natural building material, offering strength, versatility, renewability and aesthetic beauty.
The Portal
Woodford, Queensland 2018 A portal is a point through which we are transported between dimensions. The entry to the Woodford Folk Festival welcomes and farewells visitors and performers to and from a world of music and imagination. By day the shaded tunnel offers a pause before entering the spectacle. By night the vortex frames the experiences of the night to come.
Dimensions: 12m x 15m x 26m Location: Woodford, QLD Lead Artist: Juan Pablo Pinto Team: Mecurio Alvarado, Seb Guy + ‘Special Projects’ Volunteers Special thanks to Andrew Gray the welder and Ron & Pauline Fawcett of Delaneys Creek who kindly donated the bamboo. Engineering: Event Engineering
Amir Rabik Artist |Builder| Collaborator Bamboo Master Amir Rabik was born on the island of Madura in Indonesia. Chief architect of the Boom Festival 2006 and master planner of the festival site Seven Temple Rumah in Padang Bai pictured in this spread. All vegetation on site was left intact and the structure wrapped the landscape with a bamboo mesh. Built on the ground with a simple split system the fabric was propped up and laid over a series of arches.
MAKASSAN
Woodford 2015
The Woodford Folk Festival 2017 welcome gate “Mekassan” was built in collaboration with Amir Rabik, Cave Urban and the Woodford Folk Festival. It is a salute to the Makassan traders who formed a path between Australia and Indonesia in the past and now Amir continues this tradition by sharing his craft and expertise.
Client: Woodford Folk Federation Dimensions: 12m x 25m x 20m Location: Woodfordia, Queensland, Australia Artist: Amir Rabik Project Leader: Jed Long Team: Cave Urban and ‘Special Projects’ Volunteers Engineering: Event Engineering
Brisbane Festival Installation
Southbank Cultural Forecourt, Queensland, 2014
Like ocean waves at the point of breaking, two walls of giant bamboo oppose each other in a stand-off of equal forces. Their power is expressed both in the potential energy stored at the “unbroken� face, and in the tapering clatter of more than 700 bamboo poles that appear to displace in their wake.
Exhibited: Brisbane Festival 2014 Dimensions: 10m x 50m x 16m Location: Brisbane, Australia Curator: Tony Assness Designers: Juan Pablo Pinto, Nici Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Jed Long Team: Lachlan Brown, Alice Nivison, Seb Guy, Maddi Brandt Engineering: Event Engineering
Hammock hut
Woodford, Queensland, 2017 The Hammock Hut was built for the 2017/18 Woodford Folk Festival. Designed to be a space of respite, the pavilion is composed of a series of overlapping triangular frames covered with woven bamboo. The ridge mirrors the fall of the hillside and the gable front opens eastward to a distant cluster of ancient volcanic cores known as the Glasshouse Mountains.
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Designed as a 1:1 prototype community space for the Vietnamese village of Ro Koi, the installation builds upon an initial community consultation during the Winter 2017 UTAS (University of Tasmania) Vietnam bamboo studio. It was further developed in January 2018 at the National University of Civil Engineering in Hanoi, Vietnam.
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Client: Woodford Folk Federation Dimensions: 10mx50mx16m Location: Woodford, Australia Lead Designer: Jed Long Team: Max Volfneuk, Seb Guy, Quinn Revlan Engineering: Event Engineering
Pop-Ups & Pineapples Woodford, Queensland, 2012 - 2018
The connection between food & architecture has a long history. The Pineapple Lounge and other pop-ups like Iggy’s Mobile Bamboo Bakery, Slice Bar, Tea Room and the Juice Bar were designed and built simultaneously. Working with local natural materials requires a flexible approach in which the form is dictated by the nature of the material. Thanks to the Ivanovic family for all their support.
Client: Woodford Folk Federation Location: Woodford, QLD Australia • Pineapple Lounge logo by Honey Long • Geodesic Pineapple with coconut connector by Dave Goldie, • Bam Clam: Bamboo pulp and resin Geodesic connector by Dave Goldie • Pineapple Lounge Entry clad with Bamboo sheaths • Iggy’s Mobile Bamboo Bakery serving fresh sour-dough bread
The Hothouse | MONA
Dark Mofo, Tasmania 2016
Run as an intensive design studio for the Master of Architecture Students at the University of Tasmania, the 50m-long bamboo pavilion hosted advertising agency Clemenger’s Hot House forum on education followed by Dark MOFO’s Winter-feast. In the centre, two pot-belly fireplaces made with recycled steel by Chilean sculptor Carolina Pinto, kept visitors warm in the depths of the Tasmanian winter. The pavilion was sponsored by Hobart’s Museum of Old & New Art (MONA).
Client: Clemenger & MONA Dimensions: 50m x 10m x 7m Location: Hobart, Australia Lead Designers: Juan Pablo Pinto, Jed Long, Nici Long, UTAS MArch Students Team: Lachlan Brown, Mercurio Alvarado, Seb Guy, Alice Nivison, Ned Long, Maddi Brandt Engineering: Event Engineering
Artist: Wang Wen Chih Born in the high mountains of Chiayi County, Taiwan, Wang Wen-Chih describes his process as a “borrowing of ancient forms and creating a way of being inside nature.” His work has been exhibited at the 49th Venice Biennale, the 2013 Setouchi Triennale and the 2007 Prague Quadriennale to name just a few. Getting Together 2015 was a civic commission built in Kaosiung, Taiwan. Made from bamboo and clad in local oyster shells.
Title: Getting Together Artist: Wang Wen Chih Year: 2015 Location: “Getting together art festival” Kaosiung, Taiwan Materials: Bamboo & Oyster Shells
Woven Sky
Wang Weng-Chih Woodford Folk Festival, 2013 Wang Wen-Chih views each of his works as an exploration of life, death and rebirth. As breathtaking and substantial as his giant woven works are, he accepts and works with the reality that they are ephemeral. Appropriately, the 80m-long Woven Sky stood as the awe-inspiring entrance to the Amphitheatre, where more than 5000 revellers amass to witness the festival’s headline acts and the opening and closing ceremonies.
Artist: Wang Wen Chih Client: Woodford Folk Federation Dimensions: 10mx50mx16m Location: Queensland, Australia Cave Urban Team: Nici Long, Juan Pablo Pinto, Jed Long, Lachlan Brown, Alice Nivison, Ned Long. Engineering: Event Engineering
Woven Cloud
Wang Wen-Chih Woodford Folk Festival, 2014 Like Summer’s thunderheads that build-up in the southwest and sweep across Woodfordia to relieve a sweltering day, Woven Cloud builds the expectations of festival goers approaching the Welcome Gate. Inside, where the soaring cloud’s silhouette creeps over the cool cross-hatched shade, is a space of calm before the storm of revelry, a place for reflection and dreaming.
Artist: Wang Wen Chih Client: Woodford Folk Federation Dimensions: 10m x 30m x 30m Location: Woodford, Australia Cave Urban Team: Jed Long, Nici Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Lachlan Brown, Seb Guy, Ned Long, Maddi Brandt Engineering: Event Engineering
Tree Houses Bamboo + Recycled Timber & Steel
The desire to climb trees and to make houses in them is etched into the human psyche from childhood. For many of us, the first sense of wild adventure was felt in the branches of a great tree. We felt the exhilaration of climbing high, we discovered what it was like to conquer our fears, to float beyond the reach of imagined dangers, to feel truly free - even if it was from our parents freaking out below. The desire to build a shelter in this wonderful place naturally followed and that feeling stays with us forever.
Quandong Dream
Wang Weng-Chih The Planting Festival, 2016
Nestled around the trunk of a giant Quandong tree, the access ramps wind through the surrounding canopy to evoke the experience of climbing a tree. Built for the Planting Festival 2016 it is made from locally harvested bamboo, tree branches and recycled telegraph poles.
Artist: Wang Wen Chih Client : The Planting Festival Dimensions: 20m x 10m x 12m Location: Woodford, Queensland Cave Urban Team: Jed Long, Nici Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Lachlan Brown, Seb Guy Engineering: Event Engineering
The Banksia Tunnels
Ian Potter Children’s Wild Play Garden, Centennial Park, Sydney 2017 Landscape architects Aspect Studio invited Cave Urban to create a series of bamboo tunnels through emerging Banksia scrub in the Ian Potter Children’s Wild Play Garden at Sydney´s Centennial Park. As the Banksia trees mature, they will follow the flow of the twisting bamboo forms to create a living structure which will ultimately replace the pioneering framework. Special thanks to the Centennial Parklands staff and volunteers.
Client: ASPECT Studios Dimensions: 25m [path length] x 15m x 4m Location: Centennial Park, Sydney - Australia Lead Design: Jed Long, Mercurio Alvarado Team: Seb Guy, Katie Stewart, Jenna Collins
Paperbark Tree House
Australian National Botanical Gardens, 2017 The Paperbark Treehouse was created to allow visitors to experience a copse of Melaleuca trees. Fire was an important generator for the design, just as it is a source of regeneration in the Australian landscape. The Treehouse has been charred to provide a natural weather shield and give protection against fire by resisting ignition. The deep black of the carbonised structure creates a backdrop to highlight the surrounding Tea Tree grove. Three levels in the Treehouse relate to the trees themselves as roots (under-storey), trunk (main platform) and canopy (crow’s nest). The crow’s nest is a ship of the air to float through the trees.
Client: Australian National Botanic Garden Dimensions: 8mx8mx20m Location: Canberra, Australia Lead Designers: Juan Pablo Pinto, Nici Long Team: Paul Nugent, Seb Guy, Carolina Pinto, Jed Long, Mercurio Alvarado, Juan Fabrellas Engineering: Ron Rogers
Artist: Carolina Pinto Chilean sculptor Carolina Pinto created the organic steelwork that grows on and around the trunks of the tree columns. It will also serve as a lattice for native vines to grow through and give structure to a living connection to the forest floor.
Eveleigh Treehouse Nell + Cave Urban South Eveleigh, Sydney, 2019
Eveleigh Treehouse responds to the history and character of the site’s former incarnation as Eveleigh Railway Workshops. Built from steel and recycled hardwood, the two droplike forms of the Treehouse are whimsical and anthropomorphic. Their bodies are covered in thousands of forged steel gum leaves made on-site by hundreds of volunteers during community workshops led by Eveleigh Works. Situated on the traditional land of the Gadigal people, Eveleigh Treehouse is conceived as a site of belonging for adults and children alike, a retreat from the bustle of daily life.
Nell + Cave Urban Dimensions: 10mx20mx12m Location: Sydney, Australia Artist: Nell Lead Design: Juan Pablo Pinto, Nici Long Curator: Daniel Mudie Cunningham Engineering: Event Engineering
Our mentors and partners
Wang Wen-Chih
Jรถrg Stamm
Arief Rabik
Amir Rabik
Georges Cuvillier
Bill Hauritz
Amanda Jackes
Justin Brown
Jeremy Sparks
Dave Goldie
Meiwen Tsai
Juan Fabrellas
Ned Long
Honey Long
Lizzie Criner
Emma Hudson
Laura Jade Hindes
Leslie Marsh
Jonara Schmidt
Angel Heredia
Rob Coote
Paul Nugent
Angus Hudson
Max Volfneuk
Acknowledgements Soon after Cave Urban began, we realised that the best way to research bamboo was to work with it hands-on and to seek out artists who specialised in the material. Thanks to their generosity of spirit and by working alongside them on many projects we have gained skills and perspectives that have helped inform our own creative direction. In turn, we share our knowledge with the hundreds of volunteers who each year give their time and energy to work on our community art projects and, we hope, this will be a source of their own inspiration. Here are the names of some of the artists, partners and organizations who we have worked with and to whom we owe particular thanks.
Environmental Bamboo Foundation • Iggy & Ludmilla Ivanovic • Marcus Tatton • Carolina Pinto • Alice Nivison • Kate Ratner • Cliffy Rushby • Peter van Lengen • Dicma Trade • Guillermo Mortera • Martín Mortera • Hector Archila • Canya Viva • Humanitarian Bamboo • Cambridge University • Michael Ramage • Event Engineering • Brown Dog • Fabrellas Industries • Marco Steel • University of Tasmania • Dr Helen Norrie • Partdrige Engineers • World Bamboo Organization • Susanne Lucas • Woodford Folk Federation • Sculpture by the Sea • David Handley • Clary Akon • Gayl Rich • City of Sydney • Opera Australia • Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) • Australian National Botanical Gardens • Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens • Barangaroo Delivery Authority • Sydney Opera House • Brisbane City Council • Queensland University of Technology • University of Technology Sydney • University of Sydney • Aspect Studios • City of Port Phillip • Iggy’s Bread of the World • Yabby Lake Vineyard • Lost Paradise Festival • Secret Garden Festival • Parramatta City Council • Taronga Zoo • Climarte • Clemenger • ASPECT Studios • Mirvac • Carriageworks • 21st Century Bamboo • Crystal Waters Eco Village • Transfield • Bamboo U
www.caveurban.com info@caveurban.com Sydney • AUSTRALIA
Photography credits • Mercurio Alvarado • Gareth Carr • Brent Winstone • Dylan Kim • Captain Song • Justin Brown • Kai Wasikowski • Ujin Lee • Nici Long • Juan Pablo Pinto • Jed Long • Julian De Lorenzo • Wildtja photo by Peter Hamilton from Memmott, P. (2007). Gunyah Goondie + Wurley: The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, p 47.