Australian Institute of Sport commissions sculpture with DuPont™ SentryGlas® Expressions™

'In the Footsteps of Champions' is located outside the AIS's visitor center and uses SentryGlas® Expressions™ decorative laminated glass to dramatic visual effect.

October 2002 saw the completion of a commemorative sculpture commissioned by the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) that celebrates the achievements of the country's athletes, both able-bodied and disabled. Mother's Art Productions of Spotswood, Victoria (Australia) worked with laminator DMS Glass of Melbourne to produce the sculpture, called "In the Footsteps of Champions", which is made using DuPont™ SentryGlas® Expressions™ decorative laminated glass interlayer. Shane Cargill of Mother's Art Productions told LGN: "Use of SentryGlas® Expressions™ enabled us to recognize the achievements of AIS athletes in an entertaining, engaging and informative manner by establishing several layers of interest within this laminated glass monument."

"In the Footsteps of Champions" is situated just outside the entrance to the AIS visitor centre in Canberra. Twenty-one of the Institute's top athletes, Olympians and para-Olympians, are depicted using photographs. Cargill said: "We used laminated glass panels as structural elements of a sculptural work of art that combines the innovative use of the digitally-printed interlayer embedded within the glass layers. The result is a strong, clean glass monument without visible structural supports. The lamination of the translucent image as a fundamental integrated component was the perfect employment of a material where the image and structural elements combined to form the purest possible resolution of the image.The unframed laminated glass used in this sculpture exceeds Australian safety standards with its extremely high resistance to wind loads and its ability to be secured simply into a foundation. The location of the work allowed the exploitation of the available sunlight to backlight the translucent image for most of the day. At night the display is illuminated by flush-mounted, ground level lighting, which gives the panels a floating, ethereal quality. The approaching visitor is also rewarded with a slowly-fading lighting sequence that is triggered by a proximity sensor pad." David S. Cordrey of DuPont Laminated Glass Products said: "Accelerated weathering studies show the colours used in Expressions™ provide excellent lightfastness when exposed to exterior conditions."