Style: May 04, 2018

STYLE | art 43
going to be our city and our families’ city of the future.
“There have been many hard storms to weather. The Antony
Gormley work [Stay at the Arts Centre and Avon River] in
particular sparked a lot of debate about public spending and I
completely understand – when people’s toilets aren’t working
and there are flooding issues – why it did. But there are many
competing facets to rebuilding. We have to have a liveable
city and there has to be something to see when you come
here. And that work really put our city and our ability to be
recognised as a world-class destination for public art on
the map.”
Finding the practical solutions to bring artistic ideas to reality
are an ongoing challenge involving varied partners. To test
Fanfare’s rigour in our very strong winds, the engineers at
Holmes Solutions mounted a rig of pinwheels on a Dodge car
and drove it around Ruapuna Raceway at high speed.
Poised to shine on the world stage
Deborah says out of Christchurch’s heartbreak an exciting
new ecology has emerged. Artists, business, civic and tourism
bodies are working cohesively to position Christchurch as a
destination city for public art. Along the way, this embracing of
public art has garnered plaudits from Lonely Planet and the
New York Times.
“We’re on the cusp of catching up to cities like Melbourne.
Where else can you see, within a couple of blocks, an
Antony Gormley, a Martin Creed and a Gregor Kregar? It’s all
here and the experience of visiting the city is starting to get
very exciting.”
Last year Deborah travelled as a guest of the French
government to Nantes, which runs a similar public art festival
on a larger, multi-faceted scale, that really ties into the
positioning and marketing of the city. “That’s really where we
want to go with SCAPE – build it up to a point that will really
be a city drawcard, nationally and internationally; a unique New
Zealand offering.”
“People were putting my
generation forward... because it
was going to be our city and our
families’ city of the future.”
SCAPE
BY NUMBERS
• 220 public artworks exhibited;
• 12 legacy (permanent) works now in
the city collection;
• 1000+ schoolchildren in SCAPE
programmes last year;
• $13m in philanthropic contributions;
• 360 1.5m diameter steel pinwheels
on Fanfare were tested at 1111.1rpm
and now brake at 500rpm.
Standing six-storeys high
and 20 metres wide at
the northern entrance
to Christchurch, Neil
Dawson’s Fanfare is the
nation’s largest public
sculpture.
One of the crowd-pleasers will return for the 20th
birthday season this October. Commissioned for
SCAPE 8 in 2015, local artist Nathan Pohio’s Raise
the anchor, unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of
an ever-setting sun! is a cinematic-scale illuminated
reproduction of a 1905 photo of Lord and Lady
Plunket, in their motorcar, meeting Maori leaders,
on horseback, in Kaiapoi. It was selected for what
Deborah rates as the world’s most prestigious
art event, Documenta in Kassel, Germany. “It’s an
incredibly iconic work that really belongs in Otautahi
Christchurch,” she says.
We can also look forward to more reappearances
from the back catalogue, major new commissions and
a large-scale collaborative project for school children.