Diver

It was installed in December 2021 to mark the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which runs from 2021 to 2030. That gives it a purpose most oversized figures do not have. It is not advertising a business or a town; it is a decade-long argument about the ocean, standing beside one.

The construction is unusual and worth knowing. Diver is made from glass-reinforced polyester resin and plywood over a steel armature – the same broad family of materials as a classic fibreglass roadside Big Thing, but used for a gallery-standard sculpture in a national museum's forecourt. The museum describes the work as inviting contemplation of the complex, multi-level experience of being human, which is a long way from a giant pineapple, and the technique is nonetheless the technique.

It is on the public waterfront and can be seen without entering the museum.

It is worth noting how recent this is. Diver arrived in December 2021, in the middle of Sydney's long disruption, and its dedication to a United Nations decade running to 2030 means it is explicitly a temporary-feeling commitment made permanent in material – a sculpture with an end date attached to the thing it marks, but not to itself.

The museum's waterfront also holds the vessels of the national maritime collection, so the diver stands among working and historic ships rather than in a sculpture court. The scale reads differently beside a submarine and a destroyer than it would in a plaza.