Childhood memories of post-war Germany have been translated into thought-provoking assemblages.

Talking with well-known Tableland sculptor Ben Trupperbäumer is an enlightening experience. The German-born artist possesses a sharp intellect demonstrated by his eloquence on subjects ranging from art to education. For my benefit, perhaps, he speaks now with simplicity about his life and his work, although every so often a hint of the academic in him penetrates the surface.

“I guess at the age I am I did a little finer thinking of the years gone by,” he says of his inspiration for his latest exhibition Little Dwellings.

“Suddenly a name comes into your head and you can still hear their voice or see their features. Those observations stay with you and so it then led me to thinking of the people I was together with and friends with (as a child) and with that came the idea of producing a body of work of that time.

“I would think that at the age of 45 this exhibition could not have happened. It needed a distance and a quality of observation that comes with maturity to make a show of this kind.”

Born in post-war Germany in 1948, Ben says he was fortunate his parents allowed him to enjoy freedom during a time of rejuvenation and of hope and it helped to shape the artist he has become.

“I actually was not ever given any boundaries (as a child). There were things that were out of bounds such as staying out late and all the things one ought not to do at that age. That is one thing. But, to be able to dig a hole in the garden without somebody saying: ‘Oh my god, he’s going to fall in’ or to climb serious trees. That’s life and those skills I was allowed to learn, yet in an amazingly protected environment,” he says.

It is this particular time and place and the people and events that surrounded him that Ben says forms the basis of his latest exhibition. “The works that are in the exhibition are speaking about an era between the age of about eight and 13,” Ben explains.

Of the work in his collection, Ben believes Fitting into the Plans of Others is the most relevant to this post-war era; when employment was booming and people, including his parents, were building their own homes again.

“While that was happening, the Belgians and the French played manoeuvres with tanks and one let itself into our backyard. Those sorts of things were going on then and it really reminds one of the days when those things were still operative,” he says.

“I built my own shelter in the house that my father was building out of cardboard bits and rubble lying around. I built my own little world. It’s a strange thought because it’s a house that was just being built, it was in raw form, yet I built my own little dwelling inside it. It was a very hopeful kind of time and that event was a reminder of an era that was.”

In order to recapture these moments Ben returned to Germany. His next challenge was to transform his memories into a physical form in a way that would convey the meaning of an event, rather than the event itself. “That is where you become an artist,” he explains.

“It’s not a rehearsing of what was, it’s making something that evokes things.” He laughs before adding: “You’d be bored stiff to make this thing as it would have been”.

In an attempt to represent the emotions connected with these stories, Ben gave careful consideration to the materials used. He said there were various things to consider.

“One would be the scale of it, the materials you feel like using, whether you would want to apply colour, whether they would want to use friendly materials or hard edged. Once you have established that it is a matter of (asking) is it ‘doable’, how plausible is it and does it look refined, thought out, is it flippant?

“Then you have to contend with the actual audience that you had wanted to see these creations. It is their judgement ultimately.”

In Fitting into the Plans of Others, Ben chose to combine raw timbers and Perspex to create his miniature dwelling.

“The floors are transparent so it lends the whole sculpture an air of newness, of transparency, of being able to do things as you were hoping that you would be allowed to,” he says.

“I wanted a dwelling that shows the lightness of a new era, yet within it you have the strength of structure and order and discipline which belongs to a building.”

Each of his pieces tells a story in this same way. Tent in My Garden recalls a time when Ben made a tent in the back yard using sticks set in the ground and old coal sacks. It was a place to play and dream and long after the tent had gone, the sprouting sticks were a reminder of its existence.

Ben transformed this particular memory into an extraordinary acacia cedar and bronze reincarnation that retains its tent structure while abstract vegetal forms above it represent the power nature has to regenerate.

Many of the materials used in Ben’s exhibition have been collected over the years, such as the American oregon boards he salvaged more than a decade ago from the Stuart Prison in Townsville and used in a very personal piece titled Friends of my Kaleidoscopic Youth.

And while Ben’s trademark mediums of timber and bronze remain the cornerstone of this new series, gone are the typical, fabricated sculptural pieces he is known for.

In a move he admits made him anxious, Ben chose this as his first collection of assemblages, or “materials put together in a coherent fashion”. “It’s a new thing to me and one is a little nervous,” he admits.

Though there is always some risk associated with an established artist venturing into new realms, Ben seems to relish the challenge and hopes his work will go towards expanding not only his own experiences but that of his audience.

“It’s not difficult work. I think from people’s comments that it has been intuitively felt that it is very serious work but it is kind and it is meaning well,” he explains.

By kind, Ben refers to the ability to offer something a viewing audience can participate in and make their own sense of.

“It’s an engagement, really, that one hopes to achieve with one’s audience but also, you know, just lifting the bar. Otherwise why do we bother? Why do we bloody bother?,” he laughs.

Little Dwellings is at the Cairns Regional Gallery at the corner of Abbott and Shields streets until Sunday, May 25.

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