Tears of Orpheus, 2025

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney , 17 October- 3 November 2025

“Orpheus’ tears are not just for the loss of one love, but for the many who’ve been lost. His tears are our tears.”

— Candace Richards, 'Tears of Orpheus' catalogue essay

Tears of Orpheus draws from the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and centres on the idea of the passage as expressed through the large steel stair form. Orpheus was a poet and musician who travelled to the underworld to bring back his love to the world of the living. Nestled on the craggy escarpment this sculpture is both architectural and figurative as the stairs appear to cry and stare out to sea as an industrial imaginary full of brooding poetry. Drawing inspiration from Picasso’s Weeping Woman, this work holds a line to cubism with a contemporary edge. The bronze tears catch the moving light of the sun as golden drops. Moulded and cast from hot blown glass, these tear drop forms were initially made at the Canberra Glassworks from molten sand and the heat of a furnace.

Tears of Orpheus honours the ability to feel and to move through emotional passages of expression. Whilst Orpheus hulks on the cave like rocks, midway between the sea and the surface at Bondi, the reflected tear drops change to the rhythms of the day, shining in the light of the sun, sinking into shadow and catching the spray of the ocean. Tears of Orpheus explores the tensions and balance between strength and vulnerability, luminosity and darkness.

Link to full catalogue essay ‘Tears of Orpheus’ by Candace Richards.

Masked Memory, 2025

Threshold, 2025