'Obnoxious' weed woven into massive mullet sculpture

In a suburban garage on the southern Gold Coast, two longtime friends created a supersized fish that is now pride of place at one of Australia's largest outdoor sculpture exhibitions.

It started life relatively small, with the idea of sculpting a piece made entirely of red-nosed, fish-shaped soy sauce packets.

But like so many projects, its scale soon got much bigger.

"We didn't quite think it would be here," said Ged McCormick, who sacrificed half a parking space at his Palm Beach home to bring the sculpture to life.

"We were tossing up doing it at my work or at Rusty's place, but this is just where everything started … and it keeps the neighbourhood entertained."

The concept began as an Indigenous fish trap woven from invasive plants, which the pair planned to fill with fishing line and plastic litter collected from nearby beaches.

"Then Ged said, 'How about we do a whole mullet in the style of an Indigenous fish trap,'" co-sculptor, Rusty Linnane, said. 

"That's how the process went from me wanting to make a flat piece out of little sushi fish, to 'Let's make a 5-metre mullet!'"

Creating a cat's claw fish

Sold on the idea of a mega-mullet, the next conundrum for the pair was finding a weed strong enough to weave.

Drawing on his experience with ecological restoration projects, Mr Linnane identified cat's claw creeper, a South American species once imported as an exotic ornamental plant, as his target species.

"It's obnoxious," Mr Linnane said, with a wry smile and a tinge of malice toward the invasive species.

He explained that the yellow-flowered vine's method was to climb a tree and smother it in foliage until it died and crashed to the ground.

"Then it will go to the next tree, and up, and so on and so on," he said.

With special permission from the state government, Mr Linnane and Mr McCormick were allowed to harvest vines from an infestation in Nerang National Park.

"We started on the edge where we could walk up and see one or two vines going up big trees and we could cut them and treat the bases," Mr Linnane said.

"We were getting lengths of up to 25 to 30 metres, just by selectively picking those vines."

Neither artist could definitively say how many hours they spent harvesting the vines but admitted there were several unplanned trips to collect more material as the mullet began taking shape.

"It would take us about an hour to collect about 125 metres [of usable vine] … and 125 metres does about a 30-centimetre section of the fish," Mr Linnane said.

A SWELL message

After weaving kilometres of vine and stuffing the fish's guts with an almost equal length of discarded fishing line and other plastic litter, Mr Linnane and Mr McCormick moved their creation into place at the annual SWELL Sculpture Festival on the Currumbin foreshore this week.

SWELL founder and artistic director Natasha Edwards said tens of thousands of people were expected to flood the festival over the next 10 days.

"This year, up to 100 local and international sculptors are transforming the coastline into a spectacular sculpture walk," Ms Edwards said.

"You can walk along barefoot, with the sand between your toes … you're really connecting art and nature together so that the environment and the artworks really speak to each other."

Of the many people who catch sight of his co-creation, Mr Linnane hopes at least some of them take the bait on the environmental message it is casting out.

"Don't buy one-use plastics," Mr Linnane said.

"And for every exotic species of plant out there, there's a local native that will do the exact same job, and possibly better."

Mr McCormick too hopes the mullet gets caught in the mind of those who see it, especially younger generations.

"We're just amateurs, me and Rusty, we're just having fun," he said.

"I guess this shows any kids out there that if you want to express yourself through art, there's always an opportunity to do it."