Title: Twiggywiggy
Artist: Alexander Knox
Medium/materials: Aluminium and stainless steel
Year installed: 2025
Location: Keysborough Community Hub, 10 Villiers Road, Keysborough
About the Artwork
Twiggywiggy is a playable sculpture inspired by a fallen River Red Gum branch, echoing the forms of gumnuts, leaves, and bushland shelters. Its organic arches create an open, cubby-like space that sparks curiosity and imaginative play.
Developed through site research and a workshop with Keysborough Gardens Primary School students, the design draws on local flora and the creative ways children reimagine play with natural materials.
Twiggywiggy invites children into a larger-than-life bushland world, where a gum leaf can become a shop counter or a gumnut a mixing bowl. Rooted in cycles of renewal and regeneration, it celebrates the unbounded creativity of childhood and the deep connection between community and landscape.
“With Twiggywiggy I set out to create a space for imaginative play inspired by the organic branching forms of the surrounding River Redgums, heavy with gumnuts. I wanted the sculpture to suggest a place of secret bush ceremony, inviting children to explore and invent their own stories. The work draws on the chance shapes of a fallen twig, re-imagined as a landscape where play, discovery and imagination can take root.” - Alexander Knox
Interpretation for Children
Twiggywiggy is a big sculpture made for play.
It was inspired by gum trees, gumnuts, and leaves from the local bush. Its wiggly arches make fun giant cubby-like spaces inviting you to explore, crawl, imagine, and create your own games. You can turn a gum leaf into a shop counter, or a gumnut into a mixing bowl.
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Nearby artwork and activities exploring themes of nature
Artwork: Coalescence, inside the Keysborough Community Hub
Nature Walks:Keysborough Wetlands, Roth Hetherington Australian Flora Reserve, Coomoora Woodland Flora and Fauna Reserve and Frederick Wachter Reserve.
About the Artist
For nearly two decades, Alexander Knox has been creating major public artworks alongside exhibitions in galleries and museums across Australia and overseas. His practice spans large-scale sculpture, architecturally integrated works, kinetic light and sound installations, interactive video projections, and play sculptures.
Alexander focus on connecting art with community and place, often drawing on ecology, science, history, Indigenous knowledge, and myth to reveal layered stories of site and identity.
Alexander Knox’s Studio is also dedicated to play-oriented sculpture for children and young people. Working with certified play safety specialists, we design inclusive, innovative, and dynamic works that bring energy and a sense of belonging to their surroundings.
Keysborough Gardens Primary School Playscape Workshop
As part of the concept development, the artist ran a workshop with ten Keysborough Gardens Primary School students from Prep to Year 6. Using natural materials and drawings, they imagined playscapes inspired by the site’s original bushland.
The children brought creativity, ambition, and persistence, producing playful yet thoughtful designs that revealed fresh perspectives on how play can be experienced.
Their ideas often overlapped with the artists Twiggywiggy concept already in development, providing offering valuable insights into imaginative and unconventional approaches to the play sculpture design.
Community/Cultural Context
The work explores layered ideas of Cultural Heritage of place by engaging with the site’s diverse histories, uses, and social meanings.
Sustainability and Local Production
This playable sculpture was crafted locally in Carrum Downs, Oakleigh, and Braeside with trusted partners committed to technical excellence and sustainable practices. Made from durable, recyclable metals and finished with a robust, low-impact paint system, in a state-of-the-art facility with strict emissions and waste controls, ensures a lifespan of 15+ years.
Artwork Commission
This Playable Sculpture was commissioned as part of the Keysborough Community Hub development. The brief invited artistic concepts for a playable sculpture that would offer the community an engaging, site-specific artwork that sparks curiosity, wonder, and imagination. Inspired by the local flora and landscape, the permanent sculpture was envisioned to encourage discovery and deepen connection to place through playful, interactive elements.
