Bruno Torfs' art sculpture garden in Marysville Victoria Australia

Clay sculptures in Bruno Torfs'  art garden in Marysville

Only my recent trip to Marysville I was left with half a day to fill and no plans. I browsed through the local tourist guide and came across information for an art sculpture garden created by an artist named Bruno Torfs. The tourist guide had only a few pictures and I wasn't expecting much but after my visit to the garden I was blown away by the quality and sheer number of sculptures in the garden.

The sculptures in the garden are all made from fired clay and were very detailed works. Most of the scultures are life sized but there are also several smaller pieces. They are positioned so they blend in with the trees and plants. They do not strictly follow one theme but obvious influences included fantasy characters, humour and also influence derived from Bruno's international travel.  The back of the garden has a running creek and when I visited the melting snows from the nearby mountains and ample recent rain meant it is flow flowing very fast. The river was my favourite part of the trip as it had several amazing sculptures including the 'Lady of Shallot'  sculpture complete with boat.

Asides from the sculptures the garden itself is something of an artwork. Although not strictly a native garden it had that kind of rambling native garden feel to it. The heroes of the plants in my opinion were the Hardenbergias (happy wanderers) which were climbing everywhere in the garden. Both the purple (violaceae) and the white (alba) were in flower and when they are blooming they are stunning. The garden was completely burnt through in the devastating 2009 fires. 40 sculptures were destroyed along with the plantlife (see this link for the aftermath http://www.brunosart.com/aftermath.html). Even so there seemed to be close to one hundred sculptures in the garden upon my arrival.

I highly recommend this garden if you are in the area. If you want more information on the garden and artwork you can see more on Bruno's website http://www.brunosart.com/