In a poignant reminder of the ephemerality of art and life, a new sculpture has been unveiled at the ANU to replace a glass sculpture shattered in a 2020 hailstorm – and this one’s built to last.

Utsuroi (transience) is the work of 2014 CityNews Artist of the Year, Japanese-born sculptor Kensuke Todo, and can be seen in the courtyard of the ANU’s JD Hancock Building, which houses a science library.

The result of a commission from the ANU Drill Hall Gallery, the custodian of artwork on campus, it consists of three bronze fabricated rocks balanced evenly on a brass staircase with water cascading down, driven by a small motor. Its diamond formation, mirrored in the water below, also recalls the double-helix structure of DNA.

I caught up with Todo on a grey, rainy afternoon recently, but the gold of the brass still dazzled.

That won’t be for long though, as in keeping with the Japanese aesthetic principle of Wabi-sabi, the golden colour will abate and age over the years, for all is change, as Todo says, echoing one of the basic precepts of Buddhism.

The sculpture was recently unveiled by ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell, who said at the time: “By symbolising this meeting point, the sculpture recalls both the ANU motto, naturum primum cognoscere rerum (first to know the nature of things), and the Japanese architectural concept of ma,” a reference to the interval between incidents or things.

But it was less ma and more the enduring art of sculpture that was on our mind as we talked.

“I see it as a living sculpture,” he tells me. “It’s transient, nothing stays the same and we are always trying to balance things in life so my sculpture is in perfect equilibrium.”

Certainly, he says, it is a metaphor for life but even rocks have life and death – that’s the cycle of life.

As well, Todo says, water is a metaphor for link for intellectual vigour, ideas and knowledge.

And would Utsuroi say the same? 

“No, it won’t, in 10 to 20 years’ time it will be nothing like this.”

But it does represent a balance between art and nature. The bronze rocks are already patinated, he notes, and the staircase suggests human progress and technology.

When the Drill Hall approached Todo some years ago, he was flattered.

“As an exchange student at ANU back in 1999, I would have never imagined that I could reconnect with the ANU community as a professional artist,” Todo says.

Present-day Drill Hall director Tony Oates suggested the rock forms in the existing courtyard garden as a possible starting point, but told him, “it’s up to you”. 

Back in the studio, Todo thought: “There’s a rock garden, I don’t want to compete but I can contribute.”

Then he saw the shape of an internal staircase which he has very closely replicated, although not quite. He says the sculpture’s staggered gradient of the staircase symbolises progress, imagined as a continual interchange between nature and technology.

Todo tells me he’s not really a rock person but can “kind of reflect myself in a rock form… rocks are everywhere and they’re all different, but they’re all the same.” 

He started work on it in June, 2023. Sculptor Nick Stranks, famous for repairing the Dog on the Tuckerbox statue after it was vandalised in 2019, cast the bronze rocks, while Todo fabricated all the staircases in his own studio at Strathnairn. 

“I was worried about how it was going to turn out. I’ve never used brass before and it’s painful to work,” he says. 

 He built a one-to-one model, tested it with running water in the studio.

“I had never played with water before. I built a section and tested it, then showed it to the Drill Hall, telling them, “if you’re happy I’ll go ahead, but this is the last time we can change it.”

Todo enjoys talking about ideas, but when it comes down to it, he’s much more interested in what people gain from just looking.

“They’re not going to miss it. They’ll see it, it has good visibility,” he says.