A site to behold for Waiheke sculptures

By JANET HUNT

Consider context. The mark on the page, a stroke on canvas or a single note struck in a silent room. Each is a partnership of gesture and response. A work may stand alone and probably should, but it is extended, complemented and completed by the situation in which it is placed. This is never more so than in the case of sculpture.

Picture then, a blank canvas, an empty page, a silent space. This is the western-most reach of Waiheke, Te Whetumatarau Point, the headland on your right as you enter Matiatia Bay by sea.

From here, you look 20 or so kilometres up the Motuihe Channel to the faint spires and outlines of Auckland City, northwest to Rangitoto and Motutapu and southwest to Motuihe Island.

The waters are dotted with fishing boats and passing ferries. Somewhere beyond Motutapu is the America's Cup race venue. You are aware of the Hauraki Gulf as a collection of islands, home to a diverse population of creatures of the sea and air, and playground to the largest human population in New Zealand.

Below, pohutukawa-clad cliffs fall to small coves and the ocean is a breathing, speckle-back creature, with an endlessly moving skin, patterned in light and colour.

Not so many years ago, this headland was the domain of sheep and gulls. (The gulls are still much in evidence as it is nesting time: you may meet them on your walk.)

Today, the peninsula to the headland is bisected by a road, and the sheep on the point have been replaced by grapevines, olives and high-priced houses.

Over the past month, workers have been upgrading tracks, flattening arenas and digging foundations in preparation for the 27 installations which will occupy this space for 17 days from Friday.

This is the setting for Sculpture on the Gulf, an exhibition organised by the Waiheke Community Art Gallery with the support of a number of sponsors and organisations, including Cable Bay Vineyards. It is intended to become a biennial event.

Associated with the exhibition, although not necessarily ongoing, are awards: the Sculpture on the Gulf Premier Award ($10,000), the Cable Bay Vineyards' Waiheke Artist Award ($1500), the Lou and Iris Fisher Charitable Trust Emerging Artist Prize ($1500), and the Subritzky People's Choice Award ($1500). The winners will be announced on Thursday evening at a ceremony addressed by Dame Catherine Tizard.

Although inspired by Sydney's impressive and popular Sculpture by the Sea and, to some degree, Wellington's Changing Spaces exhibition, Sculpture on the Gulf has been naturalised to Waiheke.

Selection judges Tim Walker and Greg Burke's main consideration was that entries should be site-specific. They should acknowledge and celebrate the land and, in particular, this coast, its uniqueness, its histories, spirits and dreams.

The exhibits will do more than that. The range of artists and media is impressive and offers a spread of cultures and perspectives.

There are works with a rural character, such as the breathing, bleating 12 sheep of Matthew 12:12 by Gregor Kregar and Glen Spencer. This returns the animals to the headland where once they ranged freely, but with a difference. The sheep have been domesticated and tidied, as has the headland. The sheep are shorn but wear neatly knitted, brightly coloured woollen jumpers and are contained by a white picket fence.

Jeff Thomson's Waiheke Show Home is similarly topical: it is a colourful parody of modern, architecturally designed seaside dwellings which are inevitably, but lamentably, replacing traditional baches throughout the country, dwellings such as the glass-steel-and-plaster homes, sculptural in themselves, that adjoin the walkway.

Tracy Adams' Port-a-Church takes a slightly different angle, satirising another familiar country icon, the small-town church. This is turned into a tent, complete with poles, guy ropes, pegs and zips. The construction's impracticality is intended to express "the good old Pakeha doctrine of visibility and dominance" above practicality and common sense.

Since the days of the earliest Maori settlements on Waiheke and in Aotearoa, the headland has seen waves of arrivals and departures. The arrivals and departures are now from the ferries at Matiatia, but Paul Dibble's Hauraki, a bronze waka, pounder and anchor stone, evokes thoughts of those early voyages and the settlements at journey's end.

Barry Lett's mixed media figure, the spectral Large Thin Watch Dog, is a protector of the land, the people and things of the spirit. Aaron Te Rangiao's Waka Noa is a traditionally designed archway and entrance to the gulf. Considering the local debate about a large-scale tourist development proposed for Matiatia, these are particularly apposite.

The spirits of Maori inhabitants are also invoked by Monique Vette's Rawhiti, which is centred on memories of the marae; by Virginia King's Matiatia Frond, an elegiac and beautiful interweaving of the structures of fishbone, feather and fern frond, and by Waiheke artist James Webster's carving Te Tumu, which is a direct reference to palisades and promontories.

Fatu Feu'u's related work, a twin vertical waka Pao Pao, invites consideration of the Pacific migrations and the role of women in the lives of their men.

The headland suggests picnics and dreamy afternoons on the grass, but beware Cathryn Monro's Lull for it will confound the senses. Her pillow sculptures represent inner worlds, hopes, dreams and fears - but are made of concrete.

Equally puzzling to the eye is Phil Price's Cytoplasm, which implausibly balances moving ovoid shapes on the end of a long, silver cone, and Aiko Groot's Gravity Dreams, a stainless steel hoop teetering on the slope in defiance of the earth and ocean's pull.

And then there are more aesthetic responses to the beauty of the site: a shining Jive Ball by Neil Dawson, a globe shimmering among waterlilies, Inside, outside-in, by Enid Eiriksson, and a sound pool, The Cymatic Field, by Lyndal Jefferies, which uses low-frequency vibration to echo the patterns of wind on the sea in the gulf below.

There are others, too many to describe but no less interesting. Their shapes intersect with the geometry of the land, complement or oppose natural forms, delight or tease the imagination, surprise and excite.

All are in some way a reply to the gulf, the mana and wairua of the land and sea - as in real estate, the mantra here is: location, location, location.

The start of the walk can be reached on foot from Matiatia with a climb up the hill. Alternatively, buses operate from the ferries. Sunscreen, hats and walking shoes are advised. Although you can do the walk in less than 45 minutes, allow yourself a couple of hours.

The exhibition is on from next Friday to February 9 and spans the inaugural Waiheke Wine Festival on February 1 and 2, as well as Auckland Anniversary and Waitangi days.