We spent a few days in Auckland recently, hunting chunks of rock and metal. Specifically, we came searching for the city's public sculptures and statuary.
There doesn't seem to be any brochure or guide which lists such works, and that's a tourism gap which should be filled. But Elam lecturer Michael
Dunn's excellent new book on New Zealand sculpture mentions many of them.
So we saw Teutenberg's stone carvings on the old High Court building; William Wright's posturing bronze trio in the Domain (Auckland discovering his strength - spare me); noble arches by Chris Booth and Selwyn Muru in Albert Park and Aotea Square respectively; and Neil Dawson's totally brilliant Featherlight inside the Aotea Centre.
We went out to Newmarket to find the big aluminium curves of Marte Szirmay's Smirnoff sculpture, and across to Devonport for the grieving bronze soldier on the war memorial. We saw others but no doubt missed more. As I say, it would be great to have a brochure.
Each of those sculptures is an asset to Auckland. They record and honour moments of history, poignantly or provocatively. They define or redefine the places around them. They make elegant, elegiac or evocative shapes.
Sometimes, and not always intentionally, they also encourage you to laugh out loud.
They do that for provincial visitors like us, anyway. I suspect that for most Aucklanders, they are as familiar and unremarkable as the nearest pedestrian crossing.
Yet almost every public sculpture in Auckland - and in the rest of New Zealand - came accompanied by controversy.
Greer Twiss' Karangahape Rd fountain was derided as ugly and distorted. Alison Duff's bronze of Frank Sargeson in the Auckland Public Library had correspondents sniggering that a statue of Barry Crump would look better. Molly Macalister's lofty Maori warrior in Queen Elizabeth Square apparently brought complaints that it wasn't violent enough.
Back home in Taranaki, the same has happened. Len Lye's Wind Wand kept letters to the editor frothing for months. A proposal to add sculptures by Michael Parekowhai and others to a coastal walkway sparked complaints that ratepayers' money should should be spent on roads.
That makes a useful comparison. Spending money on roads makes things smoother, easier, safer. Spending it on public art makes things bumpier, more awkward, more challenging - all reasons why I hope Auckland and other cities keep investing in sculptures and statuary.
The controversy that often surrounds public art quickens and galvanises people. Do Aucklanders want their city to be safe and slumberous, or edgy and awake?
Opponents of such works often slam them as being way out. So they should be. Being way out means they make us look in different directions and with different focus, not just the same blinkered gaze.
Public art is also damned as useless. Well, so are most other important features of human existence. Do you look at children, friends, flowerbeds and think "useful"? Answer "yes" and be judged.
One definition of a mature society is that it can cope with being still as well as with being busy. Public art is one manifestation of that stillness and maturity.
And if none of those arguments convinces, may I point out that we came to Auckland and spent money there to experience its way-out, useless public art. Never would we come and spend just to drive on its safe, useful roads. So keep those carved controversies coming.
* David Hill is a New Plymouth writer.
We spent a few days in Auckland recently, hunting chunks of rock and metal. Specifically, we came searching for the city's public sculptures and statuary.
There doesn't seem to be any brochure or guide which lists such works, and that's a tourism gap which should be filled. But Elam lecturer Michael
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