Why can’t Wellington City Council get it up?

What’s going on in Wellington?  A year ago Neil Dawson’s suspended sculpture Ferns was taken down for repair after almost 20 years hanging above Civic Square. It now needs to be replaced at a cost of $210,000. Not a surprising outcome given Wellington’s infamously challenging environment for outdoor sculpture. Ferns was basically a gift to the city via the Wellington Sculpture Trust and a wide range of other sponsors.  The Council’s job was to to keep it in the air. 

So having relentlessly used Ferns as a City Icon and PR tool since day one why is the City Council sitting back as a $55,000 begging bowl approach via Boosted is deployed to help with the replacement? The public, the corps and the philanthropists did the fund raising the first time. This time it’s the Council’s turn. They are the ones who have converted this artwork into a symbol for the city and blatantly used it as a city logo. Had they asked an ad agency to come up with a campaign to do a similar job $210,000 would be getting off cheap (Te Papa’s thumbprint cost around that 20 years ago). Budget line? Marketing.

Head count

When it comes to public sculpture decapitation tends to go with the territory. For instance here in NZ we’ve had a few examples including Sir George Grey beheaded in ransom for Treaty grievances in 1987. And it’s not just a secular phenomenon, evidenced by a recent smash and grab in Canada that took away the head of the baby Jesus. Although this wasn’t the first time the kid had got it in the neck, it did inspire one of the parishioners to take action. Like Spain’s Cecilia Giménez who famously tuned up a fading fresco of Christ with her own improvements (aka Beast Jesus), Heather Wise got a lump of clay and knocked up her version of BJ and stuck it where a head needs to go. OK it was a terracotta rather than marble but the thought was there. As Father Lajeunesse said in an attempt to calm upset church-goers, ‘It’s a first try’.

Images: left, sculpture by Heather Wise and right, painting by Cecilia Giménez

OTN Beast Jesus stories
Halloween Beast
Digital Beast

Labour of love

This being Labour Day there’s no post on OTN but, it being Labour Day, we thought a bit of labour might be in order. So we collected this group of labour related public sculptures for you. Only we did the labour on the day before Labour Day (#getalife).

Images: top to bottom left to right, Chennai Labour Statue, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman in Moscow, workers memorial Teamwork in Wisconsin, Monument to the unknown woman worker in Belfast, Day of mourning monument in Saint John, Migrant worker at the Zhonghuan Art Museum in Hefei East China, homage to New York’s garment industry workers, Miller Park memorial in Milwaukee, Virginia's Memorial for fallen highway workers.

Fish on Friday

As it’s International Day of the Fish today (well, it could be) here are some giant public sculptures of fish from around the world. Brought to you by OTN: because it can.

Images: top to bottom, left to right. Speared fish Portland, Oregon, US; The Headington shark at 2 New High Street, Headington, Oxford, UK; Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Lille, France; Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park, Malaysia; Giant Murray Cod in Swan Hill Victoria, Australia; National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, Wisconsin, US; Husky the Muskie in Kenora, Ontario, Canada; ice sculpture made by Austin, Connor and Trevor Bartz, three brothers living in New Brighton, Minnesota, US; and the Regional office for the National Fisheries Development Board located near Hyderabad, India

The ups and downs of Michael Parekowhai

September has sure been an up and down month for Michael Parekowhai in Auckland. Out at the end of Queens Wharf, the plastic-sheathed form of his house is swarming with builders busy on what must be the biggest public sculpture in the country. And then across the street in Britomart, Parekowhai’s installation The Story of a New Zealand Forest is being taken down in preparation for major rail redevelopment. Public sculpture, can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

Images: top, installation of Michael Parekowhai’s public sculpture on Queens Wharf and bottom, The story of a New Zealand Forest before and after

One day in the Mayor’s office

Mayor: I’m lovin’ the way Hamilton keeps putting up statues of stuff. Soldjers, cattle, naval commanders, all sorts of shit.

Councillor: Indeed. It is becoming the bronze capital of New Zealand.

M: I want us to get in on some of that bronze action. We need a big local name to celebrate, someone we can bronze up and put in a park somewhere.

C: Turn Kurow into one of those cultural capital things?

M: That’s the spirit. Who’ve we got, famous-wise?

C: There’s that Wilson family who had the kid that won New Zealand has Talent.

M: drugs.

C: I’ve got it. McAwsome!

M: Ritchie? Oh, I don’t know. He’s a big fellah … take a lot of bronze … expensive..

C: Not if we use the lost wax process.

M: True enough.

C: We could get that guy Patterson to do it, he’s a civic sculpture whizz kid.

M: Whatever. First thing we need to sell the idea.

C: We could get a maquette made

M: What, show them a tent?

C: No, not a marquee, a little version of what we’ve got in mind made out of butter or something.

M: You mean a tiny statue of Ritchie we could show people and say ‘look, it’s only small, it won’t cost hardly anything’?

C: Yeah, a conceptual model.

And that is what they did

Sleeping dogs

Len Lye’s had a rough spin in Wellington. Once famously a blade from Trilogy came loose mid spin and then there is Water Whirler, a sculpture that just refuses to keep on keeping on. Its woes are probably not so surprising when you take a look at its amazingly analogue mechanics as you can do at the moment. The ‘sculpture’ itself has vanished, presumably for repair, but as usual there is no information as to what has happened, how long it will be out of action or if indeed it is a dead duck. Given its unreliable history and the clumsy out of scale podium it has been lumbered with, a quick ok-this-one-didn’t-work acknowledgement and a decent burial might be the humane thing to do.

Images; top, the artwork formally known as Water whirler, bottom, the works.

One day…

If the cover of internationally respected curator Claire Doherty’s latest book feels familiar, it’s because the image was shot in Wellington. While this sort of obstruction would come as no great surprise to, say, the people of Kiev, it was quite the shock when it appeared across Stout Street and Ballance Street in December 2008. The barricade was the work of English artists Heather & Ivan Morison. Titled Journee des Barricades, it was intended as a warning of a future of salvage and rubbish and resistance. Why the title was in French we haven’t been able to establish so assume it was a general reference to the revolutionary barriades for which Paris became famous. Journee was part of a year long project throughout New Zealand to create sculptures for a day. A series of works were initiated by Massey University and Claire Doherty who was, at the time, rather wonderfully called Curator and Director of Situations. Regrettably, in spite of its great success, One Day Sculpture has never been attempted again.

Get real

Looks like Michael Parekowhai’s Tongue of the dog was an animal sculpture too far for Hamilton. It might speak dog to some people but others prefer to see a more direct animal connection. In a similar spirit the screens have been put round Italian sculptor Mimmo Paladino’s War Horse memorial sculpture Cavalli Acqua and the shotgun called for. Paladino’s effort is to be replaced with a ‘realistic’ bronze horse sniffing a hat. As one of the funders of the horse-and-hat work explained, people who like horses wanted ‘a horse sculpture that actually looked like a horse’. A small paddock with a real horse trotting the perimeter as a memorial to horses is not an option at this stage.

Images: Not a horse, column top to bottom by Mimmo Paladino, Hans Haacke, Alexander Calder, Elmgreen & Dragset and Deborah Butterfield. Now-that’s-what-I-call-a-real-horse column top to bottom, Matt Gauldie for Hamilton’s War Horse Memorial, etc., etc., etc. and Phar Lap by Joanne Sullivan-Gessler

Hoop dreams

Once described rather brilliantly by the Dominion Post as, ‘the formidable aluminum sphere’, Neil Dawson’s Ferns was taken down from its site in Wellington‘s Civic Square just over a year ago. It was always a pretty bold move to suspend 175 kilograms of metal overhead in a public space, especially when the object itself often drew a crowd, but time and the weather are tough companions. 

While Ferns was subject to continued inspection, including a stand down period for some light repairs in 2011, in June last year it was removed and ‘vanished’.  Well, sort of. There were sightings of it in a warehouse but after that, not a word. The City Council has always said it will return Ferns to Civic Square and it looks as though plans are on track for that to happen with a new version to be made and installed. 

It’s odd though that, having scored with a sculpture that captured public affection and became Wellington’s de facto icon, the City Council never made an effort to build on this sense of ownership . There’s been no ongoing communication with the thousands of people who voted for this work with their cameras. 

What a lost opportunity. In the meantime, down the road in Cuba Street, Basketball New Zealand seems to have nabbed Dawson’s idea for itself in the form of a logo.

Broken news

The New Zealand Herald, big time supporters of the arts (#kidding), couldn’t resist showing a stealth photograph of Michael Parekowhai’s sculpture Lighthouse in mid-construction. Kind of inconsistent for a newspaper that will put out a spoiler alert for discussion of an episode of Game of Thrones. Of course the NZH had its view of the work sorted out long ago.  So not surprising this latest story notes that, ‘it has been labeled a monstrosity and joke by some members of the public’ but forgets to mention that (spoiler alert) nearly one hundred percent of the outrage was via the comments sections to its own stories. It's not called the ‘news cycle’ for nothing.

Image: Michael Parekowhai sculpture under construction. Photo: New Zealand Herald, pixelation OTN

Seeing double

We came across a familiar sight in San Francisco - George Rickey’s Double L Excentric Gyratory outside the SF Public Library.  This one, of the edition of three, was made in 1982, three years before the version outside the Auckland Art Gallery. Now that’s an unusual numbering system given that AAG has number one of three in the edition. The OTN research team (#google #wikipedia) went to work and found that it looks like the final copy in the edition, Double L Excentric Gyratory – Pond, dated 1988, is still available via Rickey’s dealer Maxwell Davidson. The inclusion of the word ‘pond’ in the title perhaps points to yet another editioned version of Double L Excentric Gyratory. It’s on the cards considering there’s also an edition of three Double L Excentric Gyratory II that is, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the other DLEGs. All the IIs have been placed in prestigious American collections but weirdly they are dated 1981, a year before the SF version. It reminds us of NZ sculptor/photographer Boyd Webb who would change out some minor detail, like the colour of a character’s socks, in a photograph and go on to produce a different edition of a popular work.

Images: top to bottom left to right, George Rickey’s Double L Excentric Gyratory (produced in 1985) at the Auckland Art Gallery; outside the San Francisco Library and Double L Excentric Gyratory - pond in the stock of his dealer gallery. Double L Excentric Gyratory II at Pepsi Cola’s Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens and the Williams College Museum of Art. And in Sacramento.

Going Clear

Wellington once had a brainwave about how to get some public sculpture into the city: offer developers more space if they would commission some art for their building. And so they offered five percent additional floor space for every one percent of the building cost spent on art. It sort of worked until Fletcher Challenge purchased a Henry Moore bronze and convinced the city council to allow it to spread the additional floor space it earned over future projects. The Henry Moore, in other words, was not attached to a particular building project thus leading the bonus scheme into the territory known as blurry.
 
In all there were about 11 commissions in the Arts Bonus Scheme and their fate has been mixed. The Moore was banished to the Botanic gardens (OTN story here), a Paul Hartigan neon which used to flash energetically on Lambton Quay is now static, the Robert Jesson Starfish was re-imagined (OTN story here) and now another on the roster is facing the chop. Phil Trusttum’s stained glass canopy Northern lights on the Terrace is to be disassembled (good luck with that) and all 400 plus panels put into storage.
 
Of course when someone complained, the building owners came out swinging. There was never any intention of destroying the work they claimed. That sounded ok until you look at the timing. It was only four days before the ‘deconstruction’ was to begin that a meeting was set to decide on the physical removal of the Trusttum looking at ‘how it's done, who pays for what and what the longer term options might be.’ Oh, oh.

Hands up

In the sculpting of giant hands, the one hand sculpture is King. The GH sculpture crown is keenly contested around the world from Joe Louis’s fist in Detroit to  Lorenzo Quinn's big mitt picking up cars or scooters. It’s certainly been a tough run race but the contest is all now. In a single handsome gesture on the roof of the Christchurch Art Gallery, Ronnie van Hout has become the undisputed master of the mega hand. You heard that first on OTN. No correspondence will be entered into.

Images: top to bottom (left to right), Ronnie van Hout’s Quasi in Christchurch, unknown artist Meir shopping street in Antwerp, Lorenzo Quinn twice (scooter and tank), Maurizio Cattelan Middle finger, Botero, Llew Summers The hand in Wanaka, Sophie Ryder The kiss in Salisbury, Gangnam style hands in Seoul, two hand works by Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal’s, Oscar Rodriguez, En-trust by John Merrill and Robert Graham’s tribute to heavyweight champion Joe Louis in Detroit

Strata title

It’s not been a great year for public sculptor Chris Booth. Taurapa, a site specific work installed in Christchurch in 1997, might have to be relocated and in Melbourne, a major work that has been a feature of the city for 15 years is threatened with destruction. Who’d be in the public sculpture game? 

Of course the problem is that the sculptors and sometimes the commissioners all believe that these works are forever, but forever is a long, long time in today’s world. Richard Serra was an early victim of changing tastes. In 1989 his steel sculpture Tilted Arc was removed despite all the artist’s best efforts and ended up in storage. As far as Serra was concerned it had been destroyed. Now it looks as though Booth’s work Strata (with its striking physical similarity to the Serra piece) is also facing the wrecking ball, or more likely the wrecking jack hammer. At first there was some hope that Strata might be given to the University of Melbourne, but as the university would have had to stump up with around $100,000 for removal, freight and reinstallation, the ‘gift’ was ultimately rejected. 

Last word then to Richard Serra,‘the experience of a work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of it is a deception.’

PS: News that the work may have been purchased by MONA. (Thanks M)

Images: top, threatened Chris Booth's Strata and bottom, gone Serra's Tilted arc

Crawl space

In the nearly ten years since OTN started, we’ve posted a lot of weird/creepy public sculpture (in fact a post in our first month was about that bronze dog stuck onto the guy’s leg in Wellington) but in the eye-popping stakes, the Prague Television Tower is a clear winner. Nothing (apart from people like us posting about it) can prepare you for the astonishment of seeing ten bronze babies trying to crawl up this gigantic concrete structure. The babies were supposed to be temporary when they were installed by Czech artist David Černý in 2001 but although residents loathed the TV Tower, they knew a great thing when they saw it. The following year the crawlers were attached permanently by popular demand. Černý is known for his humorous and provocative work including the London bus doing press-ups that became one of those internet sensations a few years back. And presciently, OTN wrapped him up in one of our regular baby-sculptures-you-gotta-see surveys three years ago. 

How Franz was marked

How could you go to Vienna and not visit the grave of the great artist Franz West? And when you get to the grave...well that was a bit of a surprise.

Statue of limitations

We’ve posted before on the rise (but mostly the fall) of socialist sculpture inspired by Weta’s commitment to this style of exaggerated realism (the rugby sculpture in Wellington, the Gallipoli giants at Te Papa) in New Zealand.  So what would stop us heading out into the countryside to check out Memento Park, Budapest’s museum of monumental statues from Hungary’s Communist past? Oh yes, that’s right, nothing. Was it worth the ride? Check out the pictures here on OTNSTUFF. 
Image: Stalin’s boots

Other OTN stories on falling sculptures
Fall guy
After the fall
Monroe
Christchurch

Whales in Mexico

When it comes to public sculpture Mexico City rules ok. You want fifty large sculptures down the side of a motorway? Not a problem. A bronze 1:1 replica of Michelangelo’s David in the middle of a square. Done. But the most daring example we've seen without a doubt is the installation of Gabriel Orozco’s whale Ballena three meters above floor level in a public library (the Biblioteca Vasconcelos) designed by Mexican architect Alberto Kalach. The library building itself is so immense that from the top floor even the whale’s massive skeletal form looks kind of small but from the lower floors it’s an astonishing sight. You can read how Orozco located the skeleton and made the work here.

Noted

Here’s a public artwork for you. In the Palanco subway station in Mexico City an entire staircase leading up from the trains is a piano keyboard. Every footstep plays a note with the ‘music’ composed by the crowds rushing up and down the stairs. It's the work of Mexican artist Remo Saraceni who was into experience art early and who has since taken this idea to the world. You can hear the stairs and see them in action here.