Dell Curator Simon Wright said the selection was the only public gallery presentation of the works outside the National Gallery of Australia.
The featured works include Glen Clarke’s winning sculpture American Crater near Hanoi #2 2005 and entries by 17 other finalists.
“It is really the first designated 3-D exhibition with a national profile seen in Brisbane for many years and I know there are audiences, artists and people studying sculpture who are champing at the bit to see how the DELL Gallery can accommodate ambitious projects like this,” Mr Wright said.
“It’s often a huge and expensive thing to tackle as an artist and many venues don’t then have the capacity to stage large sculptural projects. Macquarie Bank and National Gallery of Australia are really acting as key supporters to develop ways of bringing it to the public. We are delighted to be working with them.”
Macquarie Bank Foundation Chairman David Clarke said the works had attracted a lot of public interest during exhibitions in Macquarie’s offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
“One of our principal aims in initiating the National Sculpture Prize was to ensure it reached as many people as possible and we are delighted that the people of Brisbane now have the opportunity to see these outstanding works,” he said.
Established in 2000 as a partnership between the National Gallery of Australia and the Macquarie Bank Foundation, the National Sculpture Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious contemporary arts prizes.
With a prize of $50,000 for the winning entry, the National Sculpture Prize attracted a record 636 entries, with 39 finalists shortlisted.
Mr Wright said the Brisbane exhibition would feature several local artists, highlighting the emerging innovation in sculpture in Brisbane in recent years.
“I get a sense that younger artists like Charles Robb and Alasdair MacIntyre, who feature in the upcoming show, and other locals who I believe probably deserve to be in future versions like Dan Templeman and Sandra Selig, are Brisbane artists on the verge of stepping out from the shadows cast by crucial artists in mid-career and beyond,” he said.