Sanne Mestrom’s sculptures invite play

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has acquired a work by Dr Sanné Mestrom, from Sydney College of the Arts, which repositions sculpture as art for play. The Offering will be exhibited in one of the garden spaces of the Gallery's new building, opening 3 December 2022. Known for voluptuous sculptures of the female body that are a nod to Henry Moore and the Modernists, Sanné Mestrom defies their single-minded gaze by creating nudes that draw audiences to not simply look but to interact with them, through their playfulness, practicality, and warmth. Mestrom's sculpture, The Offering (Nyotaimori Reclining Nude) 2022, embodies the core of her research, which seeks to incorporate 'play' into a socially engaged practice. Mestrom's current research investigates ways that art in public places can become critically integrated, inclusive, and create interactive spaces. Although brutalist in appearance, the motherly figure with its horizontal orientation, draws audiences in and invites them to touch, sit at and sit on. In doing so, Mestrom rewrites current definitions of 'play' as relating to the physical and experiential conditions of 'place'.