Five-metre mullet made from invasive vine created in Australia
A five-metre sculpture of a mullet woven from an invasive vine has been installed on the Currumbin coast in Australia’s Gold Coast. The work for the annual SWELL Sculpture Festival was created by longtime friends Ged McCormick and Rusty Linnean.
As ABC News Australia reports, the artists initially wanted to make a small flat fish-shaped work from soy sauce packets. Later, the concept changed: the authors decided to create a mullet in the style of a traditional Indigenous fish trap.
Vine from a national park
For weaving the sculpture, the artists used cat’s claw creeper, a vine introduced from South America as an ornamental plant. According to Linnean, this yellow-flowering vine climbs trees and covers them with leaves, which can cause the trees to die and fall.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
The artists received a special permit from the state government to harvest the vine at a site where it is widespread in Nerang National Park. They selectively cut shoots up to 25–30 metres long and treated their bases. Linnean said that in about an hour they could collect 125 metres of suitable vine, which was enough for only a 30-centimetre section of the fish.
Environmental message
Several kilometres of vine were used to create the mullet. Its interior was filled with almost the same amount of discarded fishing line and other plastic waste. The waste was sewn into a net that forms the sculpture’s belly, while soy sauce packets remained one of the work’s noticeable details.
Linnean hopes the sculpture will draw visitors’ attention to the problem of single-use plastic and invasive plants. McCormick, in turn, wants the work to inspire young people to express themselves through art.
