The 26th annual Sculpture by the Sea launched over the weekend, transforming the famous 2km coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama with 100 visually engaging sculptures from artists across 16 countries.

Around 450,000 people are expected to attend across the art trail’s 18-day run before it wraps up another year on November 4.

And with it, the usual conversation about how to see the outdoor exhibition without the crowds. Because while Bondi to Tamarama is indeed one of the most beautiful walks in Australia (the world, even), it can get quite tight when those narrow cliffs are flooded with people and prams.

A piece from Sculpture by the Sea 2024 — *Chinese artist Shen Lieyi has become the first Asian artist to be awarded the coveted Aqualand Sculpture Award, which this year is worth $100,000 (photo supplied)*. *His piece, ‘Tracing,’ has been acquired for permanent public display in Australia.*

Wild weather and customs impact the exhibition

Since its inaugural year in 1997, Sculpture by the Sea has been at odds with wild weather. King tides, wild winds, rockslides and mud have all dampened the outdoor exhibition in the past, presenting a few obstacles for founder David Handley AM to navigate.

Yet despite this, the event has always been well-attended and considered a major success for everyone involved. Most of all the artists, who are in the run for Australia’s richest art award, the Aqualand Sculpture Award, which this year swells to $100,000 and is given to Chinese artist Shen Lieyi for an abstract work titled Tracing.

The way Handley and his team have managed to pull off the exhibition despite natural challenges is almost as impressive as the art walk itself. Yet this year, it’s not only weather presenting an issue.

“We as a country have very important borders to protect,” explained Handley as he launched the exhibition on Friday, October 18.

“Unfortunately, sculptures seem to be a major source of trouble for our border protectors at the moment, and we’ve had great difficulty getting some of sculptures out of customs.”

This issue mostly effects sculptures coming from India, which were already delayed due to a major cyclone off the country’s west coast earlier this year. And given Indian artists are a major focus for the exhibition this year—there’s to be 12 artworks in total—the delay is a significant disruption to this year’s plan.

“That’s why there’s a couple of structures still to come.”

In addition, a rock slide shut down a significant chunk of the coastal walk in May. This means the majority of sculptures are now found between the exhibition’s hub of Marks Park and Tamarama Beach, rather than Bondi and Marks Park. Not only has this made around four exhibition spots inaccessible for the exhibition this year, but it also means less space to navigate as the crowds start to pick up.

This isn’t all doom and gloom however. The exhibition will just be evolving over the coming weeks, which then begs the question should you attend now, or later?

In previous years, heading to Sculpture by the Sea in its tail-end is generally the best way to avoid larger crowds. Given the nature of social media these days, many people want to arrive earlier in the run and get those snaps before they flood Instagram and TikTok. The exhibition is catnip for content creators.

But delaying your visit could actually work in your favour. Given several artworks are yet to be positioned along the walk, Sculpture by the Sea 2024 is more of a work in progress. Waiting until all the pieces are in place before you head on down to the coastal walk is a good idea.

This means that the best days to see Sculpture by the Sea are going to fall in late October. You don’t want to have to contend with the final weekend (November 1-3) nor the last day (Monday, November 4) so the ideal time to make the walk will be during the last week of October. Earlier in the day, if you can make it work.

What are the highlights of Sculpture by the Sea 2024?

A dadaesque work by artist Drew McDonald is surely this year’s most visually compelling. It makes no sense. A hybrid shark emerges from a 2-metre-long peeled banana.

The aptly named Sharknana (feature image) is a head-scratcher but this piece, made from recycled plastic, calcium carbonate, steel and acrylic paint, is a great example of how playful works that hold little meaning sit side-by-side with something like Lieyi’s abstract work of an upturned tree rooted in a slab of polished stone—a metaphor for walking upstream or going against the flow.

Other highlights range from the simple, like Chris Wilson’s interactive Smoko Seat, which celebrates the ingenuity of tradies with three strategically placed wheelbarrows that anyone can sit in, to extravagant pieces like a mechanical Blue Moon by artist Ichwan Noor.

A sightly, slightly emaciated astronaut postured magnificently against the billion-dollar vistas of Bondi (Naught by New Zealand artist Milarky) should also be one of the highlights for many attendees.