"It looks like roadworks in progress, but with no works actually going on," Babs Thompson, of Turramurra, said of Peter Lundberg's cast bronze Ring.

On the second day of the exhibition the walk from Bondi to Tamarama was bursting at the seams with visitors young and old.

Of the winning work, awarded $60,000 by the judges, exhibition-goers had a variety of things to say.

"It doesn't impress as much as the others," said John Flanery, who was visiting from Harden. "I can't get any message from it. It doesn't portray anything to me."

While Flanery drew little from the work, 11-year-old Jamie Broug knew exactly what he saw.

"It's like a shark's mouth without the teeth," he said. Fellow schoolmate Thomas Abbott agreed, adding: "It seems complicated."

Ring is an abstract bent circle made of scrap metal sheets cast into bronze. The artist said it is "evocative of things in nature and industry".

Even Sydney Morning Herald readers voiced their dissent for the winning sculpture, with many relating the work to one thing in particular.

"It looks a bit like a very old dry treasure my dog has left behind in the backyard," one reader said.

While another noted, "the artist is 100 per cent right - it is 'evocative of things in nature' all right, as anyone who has a dog would know."

Though it may not be widely understood, many in the arts community were singing its praises.

"Well-deserving, it's ambitious and it's a challenging work in a number of ways," said Michael Le Grand, who won the same prize in 1997 with his work Deshabille. "I think the judges have made an honourable choice."

At Tamarama beach, where Ring is currently placed, it is clear that Andrew Hankin's 24-metre frying pan is a fun favourite among visitors.

But Chris Fox, Lecturer in Art and Architecture at the University of Sydney, said he could see why Ring and not the pan was chosen by the judges.

"I think it's refreshing that it's not of the formalist, obvious designs. The statement behind this [Ring] is not a one-liner, as [are] a lot in the exhibition."

He says the fact that the everyday visitor does not instantly understand the work is not necessarily a bad thing.

"I do think it would be good if it engaged more with the site, tested the scale of the beach," he said, adding that he felt sculptures in the current exhibition are less politically or socially-focused than they once were.

Sculptor Nigel Harrison, who won first prize in 2001 with his piece Omeomi, says he can see a clear pattern in the kinds of Sculpture by the Sea winners over the past few years.

"The judges are really trying to get the audience to view a certain genre of work," Harrison said. "Every year there is a focus on a form of sculpture that wouldn't necessarily be considered the best work there, but is deemed to be a work very respectful of the genre they work in, I think that's really worthwhile."

"In the last decade there has been quite a push of public programs to raise critical awareness of the consumeristic aspects of our society; recycling, sustainability and I think it [Ring] ticks all those boxes."