By LUKE VOOGT
A monstrous bunyip will emerge from the darkness at Corio’s Cloverdale Community Centre tomorrow night.
The three-metre sculpture – created by artists Daniele Poidomani and Mark Cuthbertson – will dominate Cloverdale’s Night of the Bunyip before being ritually immolated.
Project manager Sue Hartigan said the project was a first for the artists.
“Most of the artwork they create has a longer lifespan,” she said.
“They don’t often make stuff to be set alight.”
Wadawarrung elder Uncle Bryon Powell will begin the night – the climax of Cloverdale’s Autumn Festival – with a traditional smoking ceremony.
The centre will then unleash the bunyip, which Apollo Bay pyrotechnician Dani Cox will burn to ash in a fireworks display.
Daniele Poidomani constructed the reptilian sculpture at Foundation 61’s workshop at Mount Duneed.
He based the sculpture on indigenous stories of water-dwelling bunyips, which, according to myth, emerged at night to terrorise – and sometimes devour – people near waterways.
The Melbourne puppeteer has an international reputation for creating large puppets for events such as the Woodford Folk Festival.
“This is the first time I have created a large sculpture destined to be destroyed by fire,” he said.
“I was excited by the challenge of a work that incorporates fireworks to enhance the spectacle for the ceremony”.
Meanwhile, Norlane artist Esther Konings-Oakes conducted community workshops this month to create effigies inspired by bunyips and other nocturnal creatures.
The local residents will throw their effigies on the bunyip bonfire in their own tribute to the myths of the night.
Konings-Oakes will conduct a final worshop at 10am tomorrow at Cloverdale for residents wanting to contribute an effigy.
