Sympathetic agony

"Poor thing! Poor thing! Poor thing!"
Taxi driver as he past the Phil Price sculpture that was struck by lightning (thanks R)

Direct hit

There was hail and then there was lightning. In Wellington's Evans Bay at around 2.30 pm Phil Price's 2003 sculpture Zephyrometer scored a direct hit and has been badly damaged only five month's after its extensive refurbishment.  More here on Stuff.

Move, move, move

Without our link to Len Lye it's hard to imagine that Wellington would have commissioned a bunch of kinetic sculptures. Auckland was a step ahead with Michio Ihara’s Wind Tree produced for the Auckland International Sculpture Symposium in 1971 and now installed in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter. Ten years later they also purchased George Rickey’s Double-L Excentric Gyratory to coincide with Andrew Bogle’s exhibition Chance and Change. Today it's installed alongside the Gallery.

Commissioning kinetic sculpture is one thing though, and looking after them is something else entirely as Wellington is discovering. Leon Van Den Eijkel Urban forest has only rarely spun on all cylinders, Phil Dadson’s Akau Tangi is often a few spinners down and even though it's up and running again after a long break, Len Lye’s Water Whirler only gives out the ghost of its intended performance. 

Now one of the most successful (kinetically speaking) of Wellington's sculptures, Phil Price's Zephyrometer, has been dismantled for maintenance. Peering at the housing laid out on the ground though it looks as if the strain on the base has ripped at the sculpture’s skin. Who knows how long it will be down but the problem appears a little more serious than a quick clean and oil job.

Soon New Plymouth will have a whole museum devoted to kinetic sculpture with its Len Lye Centre. Kinetic sculpture in NZ has become a movement.

Images: top, Zephyrometer laid out for repair. Middle, damage to the housing and bottom, in case you have never seen the point of Zephyrometer, here it is.

Still life

The Wellington Sculpture Trust has just announced the completion of its 27th public sculpture, a set of pale blue-green Kina by Michel Tuffery that lean against a bank (sea-shore variety not commercial) partly submerged in water in the downtown wharf area. This commission has no moving parts which is doubtless a relief to the Trust. 

Mobile sculpture is a major maintenance problem and one that won’t ever go away. In fact, it just gets worse over time. Still, no one ever said it would be easy having sculptures that moved in public spaces, particularly in a salt-laden city like Wellington, and it isn’t. 

Over the years practically all Wellington's moving sculptures have had to be overhauled. Leon van den Eijkel's Urban forest has rarely spun on all 15 cylinders and there are always few of the boxes frozen in place. There are also signs that the spinning cones of Phil Dadson’s Akau tangi are going to suffer ongoing seizures with at least one not spinning this weekend. Same with Phil Price's downtown work Protoplasm whose movements are becoming increasingly arthritic. 

Back at the harbour Len Lye’s Water Whirler has the indignity of a semi-permanent ‘not working sign’ that itself is starting to rust and chip. And as if all this were not enough, one of the latest public sculptures (Shane McGrath’s Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds 2012) is not even a year old and is already needing a makeover with large patches of varnish gone and nail rust bleeding through as weathering takes its toll. This work came to the city courtesy of the Wellington City Council, City Gallery and Massey but the fragility of its unpainted wooden structure was always going to test any Civic idea of permanence.

The need for maintenance on kinetic sculpture is not trivial real and it must be a concern that the City Council already stretched financially will downgrade their regular maintenance. The result of that would be a slam dunk. Salt 1 - sculpture 0.
Images: Top to bottom left to right, Price's Protoplasm, McGrath’s Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, Len Lye’s Water Whirler, Leon van den Eijkel's Urban forest and Phil Dadson’s Akau tangi. (click on image to enlarge)

Bears and honey

“Gimmicky”

“The most banal three-dimensional object in existence”

“Oversized concrete vagina”

“Who cares?”

“No more value than a manhole”

“Mute and culturally adrift”

That’s Tommy Honey, designer and architectural critic, taking a stick to Wellington’s public art in the latest issue of Architecture New Zealand as reported in Saturday's Dominion Post. 

Now did that lashing bring the city's cultural bears snarling out of their caves? Sort of, but they turned out to be sleepy bears, not too much given to passionate responses, more of a wave-of-the-paw and back to the futon.

“What's to be expected from New Zealand architects” Chris Parkin, City Council and Te Papa Board member

“Wellington does pretty well” John Hardwick-Smith, Athfield architects

“Thankfully he only mentioned two Sculpture Trust commissions” Neil Plimmer, Sculpture Trust.

“A surprising criticism from a Wellingtonian" Celia Wade-Brown, Mayor

Take that Tommy Honey.

Image: A stick

Mirror, mirror on the wharf

The thing that used to stop people touching public sculpture was the plinth. It wouldn’t stop Queen Vic getting a funny hat or having someone’s underpants strung round her neck from time to time, but it did mean she avoided the odd savage kick, graffiti or over-enthusiastic gymnastics. So what happens to public sculpture that not only shrugs off its plinths but also provocatively smothers them like a set of reflective tea cosies? In the case of Peter Trevelyan’s The Mimetic Brotherhood outside Te Papa, it’s the work – not an attacking public – that has buckled. After about a month into its two-year stint on the waterfront Brotherhood’s corners are bent back, a number of the ‘mirrors’ are badly dented and if the hydraulic system originally promised to “to make them slowly change shape“ was ever installed, it appears to have given up the ghost.

In a last ditch effort to stop further damage the Sculpture Trust announced, “They've been there for people to touch, but we've decided that that's not working, so we will be putting a sign up saying 'don't touch'.“ And they did, in computer lettering onto the sculptures themselves. It looks like it’s a face-off between the Trust’s graffiti and the public. No prize for guessing who will win and, more poignantly, who will lose.
Image: leave me alone signage on The Mimetic Brotherhood

Other OTN posts on the Brotherhood here and here

The Price you pay

Mentioning Neil Dawson yesterday reminded us that while Kermit the Frog might well have thought it was not easy being green, try being a Wellington icon and see how you fare. Since its installation in 1998 Neil Dawson’s Ferns has suffered a number of indignities in the service of Wellington’s PR efforts. We have already posted a couple here and here. This time round Ferns gets a pair of Phil Price ears for its troubles or are they (please dear God no) arms? This forced collaboration is teetering on top of another image familiar to anyone who has followed Dawson’s work – the expanding ripple of a water droplet used in his 1987 work Ripples outside the Waikato Museum. To make matters worse design-wise, these images rise up in a spooky way from a phone that looks like it was designed by Barney Rubble. As they say, Wellington - Creative Capital.

Four to one against

Neil Dawson once said that there is no such thing as a temporary outdoor sculpture. His point was that to survive at all temporary outdoor works had to be as secure, as well designed and as robust as permanent ones. The wind – as Neil himself once discovered to his cost – blows with the same strength on the temporary and permanent alike. This reality is one faced by the four plinth project outside Te Papa: an exposed site, a lot of foot traffic day and night and a big space to fill with not just one sculpture but four.

Bearing all this in mind, how would you expect four sculptures on four plinths to cost out? Did anyone come up with $6,250 each? That’s what we’re talking about for the next project which has been awarded to Ilam trained Wellington artist Peter Trevelyan. We’ve posted before about what an absurdly small amount of money is allocated for this large sculptural project. The first contender, Regan Gentry, sensibly opted for a work using cheap rugged materials (Number 8 fencing wire) in his homage to the popular hobby art of wire tree sculpture, but Peter Trevelyan is taking a different tack with his work Mimetic Brotherhood.

Film maker Stephen Spielberg famously claimed that his big lesson from making Jaws was to never again work with mechanical sharks and never shoot a film on water. The same might be said for mirrors and hydraulics in public sculpture. That Trevelyan can even consider making four hydraulically moving sculptures for $25,000 is extraordinary, but that each work is covered in mirrors and has to stay in motion for months on end ventures way beyond the usual demands placed on temporary outdoor sculpture. Let’s hope Trevelyan’s contract with the Wellington Sculpture Trust puts the replacement of mirror parts, the maintenance of the hydraulics and third party insurance on someone other than the artist.
Image: Bruce the hydraulic shark used in Jaws

Ian Prior 1924-2009

A long time ago we visited Ian and Elespie Prior’s home in Wellington. It was to attend a meeting to come up with some ideas for the Wellington Sculpture Trust. Can’t remember the outcome, but anyway we were distracted by the paintings that covered practically every flat surface as well as being stacked behind doors and against furniture. An unframed McCahon canvas was hanging across the top of the bay window and while Ian muttered something about needing to get it out of the sun, it had obviously been there since they had purchased it. The collection had that chaotic charm that comes with objects that are all loved and all need to accommodate each other somehow. Elespie died some time ago but Ian kept up his enthusiasm for the arts even though it had obviously been such a shared pleasure. Now the news that Ian too has died. Ian was a dedicated collector of contemporary art and something of an OTN icon, given our obsession with the Trust’s obsession with tall pointy sculpture. We’ll miss him.
Image: Len Lye’s Water Whirler

Oh deer

Seriously, the world of sculpture doesn’t get any better than this.

You are looking at a 45m tall, 47m long moose that will hold up to 350 people. It is to be built on the top of Vithatten mountain in northern Sweden. The people of Vithatten are claiming it as the largest moose in the world. Meanwhile, the people of Wellington are asking their Sculpture Trust, “Where’s our moose?”

Some day my plinth will come

The Wellington Sculpture Trust has put out a request to young sculptors to propose a work for one of three plinths to be built outside Te Papa. The work will remain on view for around two years. Art followers will know that there are a number of these what-will-we-put-on-the-plinth? projects outside art museums at the moment including the Fourth Plinth project outside the National Gallery's in London and, more recently, the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In the London effort well established artists and big budgets were involved. We are told the payment to the artist available for the Wellington plinth project is around $20,000. This includes the artist’s fee for the idea along with all expenses and the costs involved in construction and deinstallation. A work that can stand up to two years of Wellington weather will need to meet pretty much the same standards of design and construction as a permanent work, especially when you take into account the safety requirements on any object placed in a public area. Sculptors submitting proposals will need to consider such budget items as site visits, drawings, presentation of concept, contract negotiations and consultation, engineer’s report for OSH sign off, fabrication, freight to Wellington, accommodation, installation (people and fixtures), maintenance, deinstallation, making good and return freight.
Image: The fourth plinth waiting for sculpture outside the National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square