Union

Union - Dirk Hartog Public Art Project

About the sculpture

The sculpture was designed and built by sculptors Nicole and Alex Mickle. This four tonne artwork was conceived by the pair in November 2015 during a camping trip to Dirk Hartog Island.
We wanted to craft a work that spoke of the voyage the Eendracht undertook to reach our shores. Pushed east by The Roaring Forties, it was the longest open ocean crossing on the planet at the time. That seafarers made this journey 400 years ago in a handcrafted timber vessel just seemed monumental to us.

The sculpture seeks to reflect that voyage and the aesthetic of the ship itself. Timber, bronze and steel flow from the hull-like twists and curves.

The hyperbolic structure in the centre of the work formed using over 200 metres of stainless steel, was envisaged as a way to focus attention on the landscape itself. This unique and harsh environment must have seemed so alien to these Dutch visitors -yet it is a landscape that generations of Western Australians have grown to love. It demands respect.

The work is designed to highlight this - to throw attention back to the land, the ocean and spirit of these wild places.

By Sea
Lucy Bougans

They shimmer and list
In the varnish of the seas.
the ones that came for spices
In their heavy worsted suits,
at first waiting in the roadstead
beyond the icy Zuiderzee
They lugged the stuff of their unstill lives
a thousand Dutch miles,
a Seynbrief to a point of dead reckoning
- glass, clay, paper, chests, coins, metal-
the solid heft of their Northern goods,
their boats built out of their bodies,
their boats built out of oak and pine.
This sturdy union,
carried east into a world they could not know
and barely marked.
A pause, a pewter plate
-a brief reconnoitre-