Sculptor Chris Booth shares past and present

GLOBAL PROJECTS: Chris Booth with one of his early works, the gateway sculpture at Auckland's Albert Park. PHOTO/FILE

Internationally renowned Northland sculptor Chris Booth is leading a virtual tour through three decades of his work tomorrow.

Booth, who lives in Kerikeri, said the 45-minute presentation would cover the last 30 years of his 40-year career, starting with his Rainbow Warrior memorial at Matauri Bay and Auckland's Gateway sculpture from 1986.

It will also offer a glimpse of his big international projects, such as those for the Kroller-Muller outdoor museum in the Netherlands and 2011's Wurrungwuri sculpture at the Sydney Botanic Gardens, the biggest public artwork commissioned in Australia.

Booth said the presentation at Kaan Zamaan Gallery in Kerikeri would also offer an insight into future works.

They include a subterranean living sculpture, originally designed for the Eden Project in Britain, but now proposed for the wartime tunnels under Auckland's Albert Park, and a new work for the Storm King Art Centre in New York State, US.

Booth spent part of last year working with the original indigenous people of the area, the Lenape-Delaware, removed from the region 300 years ago and now living halfway across the country in Oklahoma.

Another project Booth is working on is a pair of memorials to the late Northland artist Ralph Hotere; one for his grave at the urupa overlooking Mitimiti and the other for his mother's grave at the settlement's Catholic church cemetery.

The Hotere whanau has been helping in the painstaking job of weaving 4000 pebbles on to wire to make the memorials.

The presentation will start at 4pm tomorrow at 373 Kerikeri Rd. One of Booth's protest works from the 1980s, O3 II, made from bronze and kanuka, is part of the gallery's summer showcase which runs until January 31 and features works by 23 top Northland artists.