A beachside sculpture worth thousands of dollars and six months in the making has been destroyed by a storm surge in Sydney.
Sculptures by the Sea, the world's largest outdoor sculpture exhibition, was hammered by wild weather on Monday.
Melbourne-based artist Bronek Kozka 's Fair Dinkum Offshore Processing was one of two artworks smashed in the surf between Bondi and Tamarama beaches.
Kozka's 2.5 metre-by-2.5 metre aluminium and steel structure showed asylum seekers locked in a razor-wire lined cage.
"I was watching that thing being ripped apart there and I was gutted," he told AAP on Tuesday.
"I asked for it to be placed as close to the water as possible ... I was totally confident it should be fine there. They (the organisers) were as well."
Just as painful, Kozka said, was the fact that his message about Australia's offshore processing regime was again out of the public eye.
Sculptures by the Sea founder David Handley said organisers moved many works ahead of the surge, "but didn't expect it to be this significant".
Angelika Summa's Alien: Self consciousness is a virus from outer space was also lost to the sea but later recovered.
"Other pieces, by Alyssa Sykes-Smith, Anne Levich and Sang Sug Kim, were damaged.
