KEY POINTS:
The $250,000 glass and light sculpture set in the pavement outside the Civic Theatre is like one of those expensive electronic toys you get home and discover "batteries not included".
Even God knew he needed to create light to show off his handiwork after he created the heavens
and the earth. Yet here we have a work of art supposed to be featuring light, which is as dull as a 40 watt light bulb.
Unveiling the work two weeks ago, Mayor Dick Hubbard called it "an absolutely stunning addition to our main street."
The glass and light sculpture depiction of the Horotiu stream which ran down Queen St was "a symbol of life, energy and new beginnings, and it has captured here in this beautiful piece of art."
I'd like to have a bottle or two of whatever it was he was on.
Sculptor Elizabeth McClure explained that "the inherent qualities of glass effectively encompasses the qualities of water, such as movement, clarity, depth and reflective light."
This might have been the worthy ambition, but at the risk of being drummed out of the art-lovers circle, let me say it ain't working.
Not in the day, when it's a bit like an insert of those glass bricks fashionable for a while in the 60s, nor at night, when it's supposed to come into its own.
I've done three nocturnal sorties and retreated disappointed each time. The first, a few days after it was switched on, was on a dark and blustery night when people were scurrying across the work, oblivious to the new art in their midst.
Cigarette butts were stubbed out on it, and to one side was a long-squashed meat pie. A weak blue glow leached out from the glass, and inside, a darker varicose vein-like tube snaked down hill.
The glass surface, roughened and covered with a epoxy solution to make it "slip resistant and safe for pedestrians", was dirtied by the muck trampled in from the surrounding Queen St construction chaos.
The specially composed haiku by Hone Tuwhare, etched into the pavement at one end of the 20m sculpture, seemed, on that wet and cold night, appropriately incomprehensible.
"STOP......! your/ snivelling/ Horotiu/ Come rain, hail/ & floodwater/ laugh again ... "
On Wednesday night, I returned for a final look. The pie and butts had been cleaned away, and the glass scrubbed clean. But rather bizarrely, plonked on the pavement alongside was a giant and tasty-looking jam sponge. Aucklanders being Aucklanders, no one seemed to notice either the cake or the art work. That was about 6.15pm.
Two hours later, the sponge was still there, but some clown had been unable to resist stomping on it, spattering cake far and wide. Who said Auckland wasn't world class?
My dread is, was it performance art, and was my circling of it recorded from four angles to be mocked on some Elam student's movie project?
But the glass work was at last showing signs of life. It even changed colour, switching between blue, green and pink.
But to catch this, you had to view it from the road side, rather than the verandah side where most people walk. The veins stood out a little more as well.
But I got no sense of flowing water. The artist, Elizabeth McClure, says the "inherent qualities of glass more than adequately encompass the qualities of water: movement; cool clarity; depth and reflective light, which can be captured and referenced within the mass of glass itself."
I can't help thinking that using water might have been a better way of representing the old stream.
That's not to say a light and glass creation wouldn't work. And having paid $250,000, it seems a pity to declare it a failure. But what it needs is a direct link into the national grid. Give it a bit of grunt. Stop people in their tracks. At least pump enough light in and out of it to let people know it's there.
