GroundworkContemporary Sculpture 2021, Cambridge

Presented by

Over the last twenty years, Sculpture in Aotearoa New Zealand, has been embraced widely, and there have been many major commissions of outstanding works for cities and smaller towns alike. Ambitious private initiatives have thrived, including Brick Bay in Matakana, Connells Bay on Waiheke Island, and the impressive Gibbs Farm, which has become a world-class beacon of international sculpture. Many prestigious sculpture events, such as Scape in Christchurch and Sculpture on the Gulf, have become permanent fixtures in the national art calendar. This growth in public awareness can be attributed to many factors - a growing consciousness of contemporary art in general, the development and encouragement of arts philanthropy, and the actions of some enlightened civic leaders and individuals.

Creating and presenting sculpture has always had its own unique challenges; it can be expensive to make, require engineering and technical fabrication, and need careful planning for installation, whether in a domestic, civic or commercial environment. However, with a proliferation of places to experience sculpture and increased support and engagement, audiences have expanded, and innovation and expertise have flourished. The result is more sculptures in private collections and public spaces responding energetically to architecture, landscape, urban sites, and gardens big and small.

The works presented in Groundwork, Contemporary Sculpture come out of the studios of some of our most prominent artists. Given the uncertainty of COVID 19 and the cancellation of many annual events scheduled for 2021, we have been able to put together an exhibition and gather an audience. The mix of artists presented spans three generations, each playing an important role in the development of sculptural practice in Aotearoa and teaching and mentoring younger artists. To art audiences, most have become household names and are represented in significant public and private collections around the country.

There is a great variety of material, subject matter, and technique on display in this exhibition. From hand-carved marble to ephemeral masking tape at each end of the spectrum, with bronze, steel, fiberglass, and perspex in between. The different approaches to form creates a great opportunity to think about contemporary sculpture in its many dimensions. The ideas expressed in the works are far-reaching, from formal abstracts that encourage meditation of form and space to elegant figurative and representational works that provoke, amuse, and charm. A deeper consideration exposes environmental, political, and social issues providing much food for thought and, we hope, hearty discussion.

From my experience, despite careful preparation, there is never a guarantee how works in any exhibition will ultimately respond to one another. There is always a certain magic when you step back and see the artworks together - not just as you hoped they might be but in other quite surprising ways; as I write this, that mercurial action is still ahead. After the many conversations about sculpture, sites, and logistics, I am looking forward to seeing what happens when the works are in place and you, the audience, can enjoy them.

Kate Darrow

FOREWORD

Kate DarrowProject Curator

It is with much excitement that St Peter’s welcomes artists, art-lovers, and the Waikato community to our beautiful campus to view Groundwork, Contemporary Sculpture. Given the gap left by the cancellation of many major art events in 2021, we are privileged to showcase the work of many outstanding New Zealand artists.

St Peter’s has a natural affinity for beautiful outdoor artistic works. We have begun collecting our own contemporary sculptures and are delighted to share them with the community. We firmly believe that art in students’ lives is a great thing with the potential for lifelong positive impact. I am sure that school students from both St Peter’s and the wider Waikato will be inspired by the art on display. We look forward to welcoming everyone onto our campus.

Thank you to all who have made this exhibition possible – to our partners’ MESH Sculpture Hamilton, Montana, for providing the refreshments at the Opening Event, and our Project Curator, who has done an outstanding job in putting this exhibition together. May you enjoy the talent of the artists and the beauty of the sculptures.

Dale Burden

WELCOME

Dale BurdenExecutive Principal

Karen O’MeeghanChair of the MESH Trust Board

The Trustees of MESH are delighted to have the opportunity to work with St Peter’s School, Cambridge, to present this exhibition of some of the best contemporary sculpture New Zealand has to offer.

MESH Sculpture Hamilton is a charitable trust formed in 2010 by a group of business and community leaders to raise money for and commission nationally significant artworks, which are then gifted to the city. By working closely with Hamilton City Council and private landowners, MESH provides the opportunity for donors to see their contributions supporting a long-term philanthropic enterprise in line with the council’s public art plan. MESH does not receive ratepayer funding and is 100% privately funded. MESH has a unique structure with a strong commercially minded Trust Board and a separate curatorial panel made up of recognised members of the arts community.

MESH has to date gifted four major contemporary sculptures to Hamilton. These include Te Pumanawa o te Whenua, by Seung Yul Oh, at the Claudelands Events Centre; Te Waharoa ki te Ao Maarama, by Lonnie Hutchinson, Pembroke Street Hamilton Lake; Tongue of the Dog, by Michael Parekowhai, situated at Southern Victoria Street; and Te Tatau ki Kirikiriroa, by Robert Jahnke, Victoria on the River Park. We look forward to securing more beautiful works to be enjoyed by the Waikato community.

Karen O’Meeghan

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Foodcarts

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Toilets

$ Available for purchase

WORKSJudy Darragh Mixed Laser Blooms, ongoing work since 1997Acrylic plastic - variable size 7 large, 6 medium, 16 small

Over the past 24 years Judy’s Laser Blooms have multiplied like a voracious virus (timely in today’s current pandemic). Their neon-like edges seem to glow from within their own sustainable light source, giving them a beautiful and almost dangerous allure – a “living” plastic life form. In this work, the artist explores the idea that in nature, bright fluorescent colours symbolize poison or toxins, whilst humans can only create these hues through artificial manufacture. Entering the chapel foyer, the work takes on new meaning as it engages with the beauty and light of the stained glass in this historic space.

Seung Yul Oh Booboon, 2010Automotive paint and fibreglass - 2450 x 150 x 150 mm - Edition 2/3

Like many of Seung Yul’s recognizable and idiosyncratic works that reference popular culture, everyday objects’ scale and context are disrupted. Here the matchstick becomes permanent, elegant, and monumental, yet retaining the meaning it holds with powerful, lifesaving, and destructive capabilities alike.

Stephen WoodwardRecline, 2019Cervaiole white marble 1700 x 750 x 400 mm

Taking the form of a reclining figure of tumbled house shapes, Stephen presents a contemplation on homes, and our lives lived in them - with the everyday repetition of things to do, always culminating in rest. Sculpted in marble, the work acts as a monument to houses and the experience of inhabiting these spaces.

Natalie GuyShade (black), 2016Bronze, unique, black patina - 400mm diameter

Natalie has reworked the modern classic George Nelson-designed 1947 Bubble Lamp. Presenting the object in bronze, she transforms its materiality and upends its utility. The lampshade is no longer light in weight, nor can it emit light. Instead, it becomes an object of beauty in its own right, paying homage in an everlasting material.

Natalie GuyThrowing Shade (white), 2016Bronze, unique, white patina - 400mm diameter

Throwing Shade echoes Shade (black) as a permanent monument to a modernist icon.

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WORKS Martin Selman Button, 2013 Carrara marble - 400 x 400 x 140 mm

Working in Italian marble, Martin’s work becomes part of a long history of classical sculpture linking back hundreds of years. However, his fine workmanship celebrates and subverts this tradition in his use of everyday 21st century objects as subject matter. In this work, the beauty of the material and technical expertise defy the marble’s weight and solidity, creating the illusion of a cushion’s softness and lightness - immortalized in stone.

Chauncey FlayOsterns Inversion 11, 2001New Zealand greywacke, steel - 3700 mm tall

“In all my works, there is a physical process of breaking and putting back together. The language of geometry references architecture as a healing and rebuilding process. The faceting of stone is a slow and meditative reductive process that expresses the relationship between matter and time.” Chauncey’s recent work represents an exciting shift to a larger scale, providing a more physical and direct encounter with the viewer and environment.

Anton ParsonsHaptic, 2020Stainless steel - 1500 x 1500 x 600 mm

Often large in scale, Anton’s works are highly finished and often reference manufacturing and machinery. Seen without a practical function, the abstract and minimal forms become intriguing in their own right. Braille is a recurring motif in his work, scaling up the dots of meaning to create abstract emblems that conceal their meaning. In Haptic the word myopia is spelled in the oversized dots, playing with the idea of narrow or single vision.

Ben FosterSilver Figure, 2019Aluminium, waterborne automotive paint - 500 x 1900 x 500 mm Edition of 3

Ben describes himself as a minimalist, interested in reducing natural forms to their most simple, drawing on subtleties to highlight contrasts. His sculptures explore how features can be abstracted to the barest representation yet still conveying particular characteristics, such as movement and tension.

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Stephen WoodwardBlack Branch, 2009Indian Black Granite - 1800 x 220 x 200 mm

In this work in stone Stephen examines a branch and the life force of trees. He makes an environmental plea to consider the consequences of destroying forests and the future for ourselves and our planet. “I present landscape and landforms as images to critique human nature; our need to overlay everything with notions of identity, or productivity or settlement.”

Jeff ThompsonTin Owl, 2014Recycled corrugated iron

The undeniable master of corrugated iron, Jeff has used the material in his work, to incredible effect, for over 30 years. He has created many much-loved public artworks, such as the Gumboot in Taihape and Holden in Te Papa. Tin Owl joins many animals in his repertoire, including life-size elephants, giraffes, and cows, among others. As the owl is an important symbol from the St Peter’s crest we are delighted to have this work on loan from a generous friend of the school.

St Peter’s, Cambridge collection.

David McCrackenJust Get Me Off, 2020Corten steel - 3300 x 1800 x 1000 mm

David’s latest metal sculptures appear to be large, rusted toothed constructions, remnants of the industrial age. This work is a looped form like a zipper suspended from a metal frame. It explores the notions of flexibility and rigidity in conflict.

Mary-Louise BrowneSeeing is Believing, 2020Neon and Perspex - 1500 mm diameter

Mary-Louise’s work explores her fascination with language and its dual power to interpret and misinterpret, to provide clarity or confusion, and to inspire or cofound. Seeing is Believing examines the possibilities and problems of language in the public domain. Here the neon text is in reverse and yet still readily accessible. Is the real work perhaps in the shadow that it casts?

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WORKSBen FosterKārearea (New Zealand Falcon), 2020Aluminium, waterborne automotive paint -

H 1800 x W 550 x D 300mm

The falcon form is reduced to minimal facets, yet retains this endangered native bird’s essence and majesty. The work is placed in the landscape of the school grounds against the backdrop of Mount Maungatautri’s acclaimed national bird sanctuary.

Gregor KregarA Sound of Thunder, Stegosaurus Lime Rock, 2019Mirror polished stainless steel and painted stainless steel -

2110 x 2200 x 1300 mm (including base)

Gregor creates both figurative and abstract sculptures using a broad range of media. In this work the formalist elements of the geometric prism are juxtaposed with the playful child’s toy dinosaur. The dinosaur now made in stainless steel and on a large scale has a renewed majesty and beauty, inspiring perhaps the same wonder experienced by a child when first discovering the amazing world of dinosaurs.

Jeff ThompsonFlock, 2021Recycled corrugated iron - various sizes

Here Jeff presents a flock of humble chickens made with recycled corrugated iron where the colours of rust and old paint beautifully suggest these sturdy birds’ plumage in our free-range setting.

Yolanda Hickman Thickets (paisleydolphinsnakeskincarcondensationbottlebritish camoufluagedogfireiceblockwoodandalbatross), 2021Polyvinyl alcohol, resin, fibreglass and lacquer on marine ply

2800 x 1400 x 1400 mm

Yolanda’s recent sculptural works feature outline-style shapes of animals, plants, technology, and motifs from popular culture. “I’m really interested in the contemporary nature of images - how we’re surrounded by images all the time and how we try to deduce meaning from them,” She currently has a large public work outside Te Papa as part of the 4 Plinths sculpture project in Wellington.

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WORKSChel ChanMind, Body, Spirit, 2011Bronze, glass, wood

This was created in honour of the 75th St Peter’s Jubilee by a then Year 13 art and design student. The materials used (bronze for strength and body, glass for transparency and the spirit, wood for mind and growth) were chosen to embody the innate qualities of the St Peter’s educational philosophy.

St Peter’s, Cambridge collection.

Alberto Garcia Alvarez2 in 1, 2020 Aluminium alloy - 2700 x 1000 x 1000 mm

Alberto Garcia-Alvarez was born in Spain and came to New Zealand in 1973. He taught at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland for 22 years and has had a powerful impact on a generation of younger artists. Primarily a painter, his work is minimal, geometric and plays with texture and beautiful saturated colour contrasts. In his artistic exploration he transfers some of these abstract ideas to sculpture, examining similar concerns of shape, edge, and balance in 3D. Here in 2 in 1 the intersecting shapes engage in harmony to create a work striking in its simplicity and elegance.

Virginia KingPacific Radiolaria, 2020Marine-grade 316 Stainless steel, hand-worked - 1300 x 150 mm

This double-sided stainless steel work references marine protozoa and the beautiful and intricate silica exoskeletons they produce. Laser cut, each circle is hand finished, and the points all painstakingly welded. Pacific Radiolaria draws attention to the acidification, and threat to marine life dependent on the balance of temperature, salinity, and nutrients in the world’s oceans. Referencing fossil forms of Radiolaria that date from the Cambrian era the work has a message about fragile ecosystems and the desperate need to preserve them.

David McCrackenLovely Boy, 2019Stainless steel - 2150 x 600 x 600 mm

From a series of works that explores the form of a rocket and/or missile, David considers the contrasting functions of each. One representing exploration, discovery, and new worlds, while the other has a darker, more destructive nature. Highly polished, expertly fabricated, and with bright automotive paint, the aesthetic suggests shiny hot-rods and the excitement of objects designed to hurtle through space.

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WORKSDavid McCrackenTowards a Better World, 2015Stainless Steel

This is the latest addition to the School Collection. Purchased with funds from an Alumni parents fundraising initiative.

St Peter’s, Cambridge collection.

Veronica HerberJuju Mama, March 2021Washi Foto tape - 7000 x 1500 mm

Along with the installation in the Kahikatea Grove, this wall work by Veroncia was completed during her recent time spent at the school. Here she uses her signature Japanese tape placed directly onto the wall in her most recent geometric design.

St Peter’s, Cambridge Artist in Residence 2021

St Peter’s Student WorkKai, March 2021Aluminium cans, photograms, air dry clay, acrylic on canvas

All current St Peter’s Visual Art students and staff have contributed to this collaborative installation which examines food, its production, and consumption. Values and customs are depicted from both local and international perspectives. Students have chosen humour, social messages, and personal experiences to share their interpretation of “Kai.”

St Peter’, Cambridge student work

Gregor KregarImmersive Echoes, 2011Stainless steel

This is the first contemporary sculpture purchased for the school by a group of Alumni parents. Choosing a work by a leading artist, their goal was to inspire students with artistic excellence, presenting a work that could be seen every day as they move around the campus.

A larger work from this series stands outside Christchurch International Airport.

St Peter’s, Cambridge collection

Anton ParsonsGate, 2020Corten steel and aluminium - 1500 x 1500 x 600 mm

In this work Anton uses aluminium discs to once again denote braille. Suggesting that the sculpture should be read, or understood physically, in relation to the body and environment.

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WORKSGregor KregarTriceratops on Corten Rock, 2017Marine-grade stainless steel and corten steel

2110 x 2200 x 1300 mm (including base)

In elevating the everyday object to the position of art, Gregor plays with our expectations and forces us to re-examine and take a deeper look.

Johl DwyerColour Labyrinth, 2021Powder coated aluminium - 2500 x 300 x 300mm

In his work Johl consistently blurs the lines between painting and sculpture. There is a continual investigation of abstraction and the elements of colour, material, and form. Since 2018 he has been creating larger-scale works that develop and hone his earlier ideas. This work celebrates the beauty of geometry in nature.

Fred Graham Kotuku, 20151300 x 1000 x 600 mm

Stainless steel - 1000 x 1000 mm

Fred Graham is a Tainui kaumatua of Ngāti Korokī Kahukura descent. He is a renowned carver and inspiring mentor. As part of an important group of artists who broke with traditional carving and materials, he participated in the groundbreaking exhibition Contemporary Maori Painting and Sculpture in Hamilton in 1966. Over his long career, he has created many important and much-loved public sculptures. Birds have always been an enduring subject close to his heart, and here he presents Kotuku, the white heron. The bird is stylised in simple form, capturing a moment kotuku balancing on one leg dryings its wings.

Veronica HerberKeep your Eyes Up, Kahikatea Grove, March 2021Bamboo, washi tape, bungee chord - 7 screens 8000 x 2500 mm

Alongside the students, Veronica has recreated an installation first presented on Waiheke Island in 2017. Here she uses coloured masking tape, together with bamboo poles for support, to create an installation in the Kaihikitea Grove.

St Peter’s, Cambridge Artist in Residence 2021

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Paul DibbleHuia Construction, 2021Cast Bronze and Corten Steel - 2850 x 2200 x 460 mm

Working primarily in bronze, within the twentieth-century European sculptural tradition, Paul’s stylistic hallmarks include organic and sinuous curves, richly burnished patinas and a finely weighted sense of balance. Birds, the huia in particular, have special significance for the artist and can be seen in a number of his sculptures as a reflection on the natural environment, and the threat of development and progress.

Gregor Kregar Rusty Lullaby, 2020 Cast Iron - 1200 x 530 x 300 mm

Here the common garden gnome is elevated to art, requiring the viewer to re-examine this suburban ornament. “I’m interested in how something that is usually made out of plastic or concrete and is associated with a low, kitsch aesthetic can be transformed into an arresting monumental sculpture.” These gnomes also refer back to Medieval times in Europe when they were regarded as sacired gatekeepers, watchers, and guardians.

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EXHIBITION INMANAGEMENT

BUILDING

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Veronica Herber Artist in Residence, 2021

Time Fragments, 2018Archival inkjet print on photorag paper

1130 x 870 mm

Edition 2/19

Gradient Grey, 2017Archival inkjet print on photorag paper

910 x 1150 mm

Edition 6/49

Medium Grid Small, 2020 Hand torn foto tape on Hahnemule Paper

380 x 300 mm

Grey Modern, 2020Hand torn foto tape on Hahnemule Paper

380 x 300 mm

Juju Mama, 2021Hand torn foto tape on Hahnemule Paper

360 x 285 (460 x 295mm framed)

Down by the River, 2021Hand torn foto tape on Hahnemule Bristol Board

360 x 285 (460 x 295mm framed)

A number of people have made this exhibition possible, and we extend our gratitude for their support and assistance in bringing

Groundwork – Contemporary Sculpture to life:

Project Curator

Kate Darrow

Project Co-ordinator

Sharon Roux, Director of Advancement, St Peter’s

Galleries

Gow Langsford Gallery

Laree Payne Gallery

Starkwhite

Sumer

Tim Melville

Two Rooms

Sponsors

Montana Catering

TapeSpec

Graphic Design

Kath Carmody

Volunteers

Daryl Horn, Property and Facilities Manager at St Peter’s

The entire Property and Facilities Team at St Peter’s

Kerry Clarkin

Brian Roberts

Finally, and most importantly, to all the artists, without whom the exhibition wouldn’t have been possible.

The proceeds from the sale of works in the exhibition will go towards a new sculpture for the school

collection and the next MESH project.

Should you wish to purchase a work, please contact

Project Curator Kate Darrow 021-706751.

THANK YOU

MESH-gifted sculptures to Hamilton