Please note that the numbers listed do not correspond to those on the physical art map. This is a curated selection of artworks currently on view at Brick Bay.
Carved over the space of 6 months, Anton Forde’s spectacular Ngā Manaaki is a site-specific installation, inspired by the land and philosophy of Brick Bay.
Composed of a formation of 44 individual contemporary pou with a commanding presence on the hillside, this artwork explores the concept of manaakitanga – a broad and expansive term encompassing the notions of support, care, protection, hospitality, respect and generosity. Perhaps the most profound meaning in the Brick Bay context is the act of caretaking, whether it is for the whenua, for others, or one’s own wellbeing.
As Forde explains: “The whakapapa / genealogy of this work is grounded in the philosophy of Brick Bay…the Didsbury whānau, the whenua, the reality of sustainability and the connecting mahi toi are all relevant aspects when we link the ability to leave a legacy to our whānau and in turn the wider world. At present we are seeing a real shift in our approach to using land and water as a resource. At Brick Bay I feel this approach has been embedded in whenua / land and tangata / people for many years, and the legacy is whakapapa.”
The pou are carved from sustainably sourced Australian hardwoods (jarrah, ironbark, eucalyptus) and the dazzling spectrum of colour creates movement and vibrancy across the installation. The varying shades give each pou a unique identity, together with the wood grains which roam over the pou like fingerprints. Furthermore, the distinctive poise and pose of each figure, the carved korowai tāniko (cloak design) and the individual pounamu taonga (greenstone pendants) are marks of self-expression and individualism. There is a deliberate move away from uniformity; rather there is a celebration of diversity, and we are reminded that the subtleties of a person such as expression and gesture are what make up their character.
Proudly presented in partnership with Gow Langsford Gallery
Operating in a wide range of materials, scales and forms, Gregor Kregar has forged a reputation as one of New Zealand’s leading contemporary sculptors.
Kregar’s dinosaurs subvert the original and more menacing definition of the word (‘terrible lizard’) and through a process of experimentation each sculpture is marked with a friendly character, mimicking that of an inflatable balloon or pool toy. Kregar is well known for his explorations of the prism form, observed here as a futuristic rock of welded corten steel.
Inspired by his children's fascination with dinosaurs, Kregar explains: “I am interested in how the familiar subject can be represented in a way that displaces the original meaning and imbues the subject with new and unfamiliar meanings. My work deals with issues of ambiguity and the uncanny, yet it is strongly connected to the social, economical and political environment I live in.”
Imagine a world where the trees and plants have evolved into something that is partly natural, partly something else - robotic or artificial. Chrysalid takes its name from the science fiction novel, The Chrysalids, by British writer John Wyndham (1955). The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic world where eugenics is practised and humans, animals and plants with even minor mutations are banished.
The grand scale of this elegant sculpture on the trail standing 10.8 metres high on the hill and the tendrils that move in the wind stretch to 9.2 metres across, can also be glimpsed from across the Brick Bay farm and from the top of the vineyards. The arms stretched up resemble a far away palace or castle top from a fantasy movie or Seuss-like trees from the Lorax.
Phil Price's works reference the natural world, flowers and organic structures, while also embracing the skill of engineering and design to create sleek abstract sculpture. The kinetic element of the work is achieved through highly skilled engineering, using carbon fibre composite to create a seamless synergy between form and motion.
Price made two of these pieces, one with a silver finish that was gifted to La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2017, while our piece at Brick Bay, has a unique finish - delicate pinks, through to blue and violets, mauves moving into blues in homage to the hues of the hydrangea bloom. Chrysalid is sited in the landscape now, with the surrounding trees in a perfect spot to catch the wind that moves through the valley, propelling her delicate arms to move and dance.
Nestled in native bush at the top of the sculpture trail’s ‘figure-8 loop’ boardwalk, visitors will encounter Nicholas Duval-Smith’s majestic Wake-Up Call. Recently installed, but seeming to have been stationed in this spot forever, this artwork has a sense of being timeless and other-worldly.
Framed by three elegant corten steel legs which have a creature-like quality, the large bell hovers in the centre, and upon first discovery there is a sense of gentle anticipation, perhaps even apprehension. As the subtitle ‘a vibration from within’ infers, Wake-Up Call is an interactive sculpture, designed to invite visitors to sit beneath the bell. What is interesting about this act is that it immediately breaks away from the more typical interaction we tend to have with artworks - look, but don’t touch. Furthermore, sitting beneath a large bronze bell, ducking one’s head to be encased within it, requires an element of trust. Once inside, the gold leaf provides a view of a gorgeous glowing chamber which elevates the experience to be one that feels reverent and sacred. But the experiential emphasis of this work is that of the sound it produces. With the use of Smith’s hand-carved mallet, visitors are invited to strike the exterior of the bronze bell, which provides a rich yet delicate scope of vibrations and therefore sound frequencies. Given the dome-like encasement of the bell, the ‘surround-sound’ effect is effervescent, and both calming and invigorating.
As Duval-Smith notes, “Bells can connect us with the metaphysical, within and without. This is observed in both Eastern and Western cultures. Wake-up Call is an ethereal interactive artwork, inviting the visitor to experience a meditative moment listening to a spectrum of sound frequencies. It may also serve as an opportunity to connect with the self or as a channel to broadcast wishes of hope or joy.”
An explosive installation that reframes discarded plastic as a material of value, Droplets demonstrates an exploration of the environmental consequences of plastic waste; urging a shift towards sustainable ways of creating and consuming.
Artists Bobbie Gray and Lara Thomas describe Droplets as “a duality of melancholy and hope; tears of sorrow for environmental degradation as well as the potential for regeneration. Each Droplet is brought to life through the arrangement of hundreds of salvaged plastic parts, artfully manipulated into multitudes of imagined flora. The fabrication process is akin to composting - collecting what is deemed ‘excess’ or ‘waste’ and transmuting it into something of use and value, enabling new iterations of existence.”
The playful artwork titles (borrowed from gimmicky cocktail names), are a nod to the previous life of the material as containers for beverages.
In the middle of the sculpture trail is a curious new structure: a site-specific sculptural project by artist Jeff Thomson. Thomson is recognised both in New Zealand and internationally for his experiments with corrugated iron such as the colossal gumboot in Taihape and the corrugated iron Holden station wagon now residing in Te Papa’s collection.
With Mesh, this consideration of shelter finds an elegant expression in brightly painted perforated aluminium. Thomson comments: “I like taking away the function of the material…to protect us from the elements, so filling it with holes destroys this.” Visitors are invited to interact with this down-scaled iconic bach, stepping inside its hole-pierced walls with the perforated roof providing only symbolic shelter. There is a playful approach to the removal of the boundaries we are accustomed to between interior and exterior worlds; instead, the outside world travels in and the inside world is glanced upon from the outside perspective. More than a decorative finish, the multiple paint layers are crucial to the vibrancy of the sculpture and have taken months to build up, linking to Thomson’s training at Elam Art School as both a painter and print-maker.
Filipe Tohi was born in Ngele'ia, Nuku'alofa, Tonga, and immigrated to New Zealand in 1978. Tohi is a tufuga lalava, an expert in the Tongan art of binding with Coconut sennit.
Tohi's sculpture titled Aotea (The White Cloud) takes on the high priests of international geometric abstraction, such as Francois Morellet and Sol Le Witt. Tohi exhibited with these two canons of twentieth century art in a three person exhibition in Lyon, France in the early 2000's.
Tohi became good friends with Morellet, exchanging artworks and shared a natural affinity for the mathematical sublime and minimalist art.
The mathematical sublime is a feeling of the sublime which we experience when we encounter something overwhelming in size. An aesthetic estimation of size, says Immanuel Kant, is something that occurs "in mere intuition (measured by eye)".
Similarly to Morellet, Tohi adopted a pictorial language of simple geometric forms; lines, squares and triangles assembled into three-dimensional compositions. Tohi also shares a particular affinity to the American 'light and space' artists Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and John McLaughlin.
Aotea invites the viewer into the artists own deep perception, which provokes introspection and therefore a greater understanding of one's relationship to nature.
Graceful bronze sculptures, finished with a soft wax patina and offering multiple viewpoints, are at the heart of Terry Stringer’s work. Initially captivated by the elegant curved forms, one soon discovers that as the viewing angle is altered, so too is the subject matter.
Out of the standing figure of a child, a face and a gesturing hand are uncovered. It is as though one sculpture has been chiselled into so as to reveal another. So here, a presence exists inside the body of another.
Finished with a distinctive painterly quality that is characteristic of the artist, Egyptian Child has the appearance of a rich graphite drawing or a moody sepia photograph, expanded into three dimensions. As Stringer offers: “The changing of subject is part of my long time preoccupation with the hidden side of the sculptural object.”
David McCracken’s practice often concerns elevating humble, everyday objects into memorable, large-scale sculptures. He started sculpting in his early days by carving driftwood and worked making props for sets before moving into metals. A job in his youth working for a craftsman who made all his own tools proved to be foundational. There he learnt that discarded material could be transformed into something useful, even beautiful. As McCracken recalls, ”I noticed how working men found and expressed respect for their fellow man through appreciation of their craft and skill, as represented by the objects and edifices of the made environment. As a maker, this remains essential to me; that the quality of your work can be a symbol of respect for your fellow man.” After years of working with metals, often experimenting at a large scale, McCracken has developed innovative ways of working that influence the forms he makes. He uses techniques such as ‘drop-forging’, where large steel weights are dropped onto sheet aluminium from a crane, and ‘hydroforming’, a way of stretching steel with hydrostatic pressures. McCracken is interested in manipulating materials to generate their own form, as opposed to casting, which he views to be a more static process.
Flexible belts and mechanical gears have been the subject of his recent investigations, and My first ten thousand course corrections is no exception. Its large, looped form with raised ridges, recalls the shapes of bulldozer tread or an immense driving belt, and becomes an enduring monumental object. The durability of the weighty industrial corten steel streaking and rusting enhances the sculpture with a timeless and weathered appearance. The intricate, repeated pattern creates a smooth, continuous composition and the seamless craftsmanship within it causes the viewer to wonder exactly how it was made. Here we see McCracken exploring ideas integral to his practice: mass and volume, flaws and faults, absence and presence, stress and pressure.
Virginia King's suspended sculpture AETHERIUM Ancestral vale is a memory of Kauri forests lost, ghosts of the past and a pertinent warning of the current threats of Kauri dieback and the need to protect our environment. The aluminium trunks suspended from the trees have an ethereal beauty, the subtlety of the silver fronds shimmering in the light almost disappear with the chiaroscuro effect.
Throughout her practice, Virginia King often utilises recycled materials in her artworks. She is an environmentalist and a recurring theme running through her work is to draw awareness to our environment and the earth's delicate ecosystems. She abstracts forms from nature, often magnifying the scale and places the work back within a specific natural landscape it is synonymous with.
Kauri are indigenous to the forests of northern New Zealand, where they are a centrepiece, stretching tall. The biggest Kauri can reach heights of over 50 metres and as some of the longest living tree species in the world, they can live for over 1000 years. Kauri provide shelter and protect many smaller native trees and flora that grow under its giant canopy, which is why they have the role of the greatest rangatira of our forests and need to be protected. Kauri dieback disease was discovered in New Zealand forests in 2009; it is a pathogen that destroys the trees from the roots and is threatening kauri with functional extinction.
This work was originally commissioned in 2000 as a central atrium installation at Botany Town Centre. Decommissioned in 2019, the artwork was returned to the artist who has gifted it to the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail. It has been reconfigured and installed in the Kahikatea Forest on the Brick Bay Trail.
The wind holds many stories as it sweeps through. It speaks of the health and wellbeing of the people, the moana, and the whenua. Without the wind, we would be breathless, birds would not fly, seeds would not spread, oceans would be lifeless and our people would not be prosperous. The wind has a voice, sometimes loud, sometimes subdued. It connects us. It echoes our past, voices our present, and opens to our future. This project asks you to listen to the voice of the wind, and explore the kōrero it has with the surroundings.
The concept, deeply informed by mātauranga Māori, involved close consultation with and guidance by local iwi Ngāti Manuhiri ensuring that the application of the subject matter into architecture was communicated correctly and respectfully. This resulted in the team being gifted a pūrākau (mythological narrative), which informed the visual patterning on the folly.
Voice of the Kōkōhau uses layers of timber shingles, strung in a way to allow precisely the right amount of movement to enable a subtle kinetic effect and, as a result, create a soft clatter of timber, like that of an earthly wind-chime. The ordered assemblage of layered shingles is designed with a multi-coloured palette of Resene paints and stains. In this way, the Folly takes on multiple meanings; not only is it the expression of the wind’s force and activation of the wind’s voice, but each of the shingles inherits the role of a feather. Collectively, the impression of a kākahu (cloak) is created, appearing to drape over the structure, which grounds the structure within the whenua. The Folly has a deeply interactive quality about it - not only in the curiosity and delight it creates through movement and sound, but in the way it encases those who visit it, encouraging them to walk through it, to be sheltered and feel connected to the elements.
William Creighton explains: “As you enter, it’s like a cloak of manaaki. It’s ephemeral but also grounded in the cultural narrative of the site. Nearby Te Hauturu-o-Toi (Little Barrier) is the final resting place of the God of Wind and a cloud rests over it, almost like a crown.”
As the title suggests, Femme-ly Velues is an expression of both femininity and feminism. Playing on the traditional term ‘family values’, this remarkable structure was designed by an all-women team - Claire Ford, Elise Cautley and Jennifer Gao - a first for the Brick Bay Folly project since it began nine years ago, and a celebration of the growing presence of women in architecture and construction.
Responding to the competition brief, the team members - who are now in professional practice - began with an idea to explore ornamentation and its role within architectural history. In both the initial design and finished folly, there is an allusion to the fabric crafts of sewing and weaving, with the designers inspired by skills they were taught by their mothers. As the team stated in their proposal: “To knit or sew is a parametric practice yet with carefully honed skills passed to the artist through a matriarchal bloodline.”
The folly’s form emerged organically from an afternoon of conversation and sketching to become three ‘bodies in space.’ As the design evolved, so did the complexity of it, mimicking the gradual building of layers within a woven piece. Ford explains: “First, the warp of the loom (vertical elements) is established, then the weft is run through, with horizontal lines running back and forth. Finally, when the elements are tensioned and compacted into a final piece, it becomes known as ‘the work’.”
The challenge then was how to translate the fabric crafts of sewing and weaving into an architectural structure. There was an inherent desire to reinterpret the tradition of marrying textile and construction, “acknowledging the heritage of textile craft among women, while simultaneously challenging the western perception of textile craft being assigned to low-brow ornaments hung within the built environment.”
Springing from Jim Wheeler’s REGENERATION SERIES, the revered native Puriri sprouts from a distinctively New Zealand gate post. This ‘indication of new life symbolises the country's constantly evolving society while also emulating nature's regenerative power. Referencing the traditional fences and gates formerly situated on the Brick Bay land, the leaning wooden post - a relic of former times - is on closer inspection, meticulously created from bronze with the sprouting top recalling its former state.
As Wheeler “Fence and gate posts form a demarcation between nature and the humanised. Domestically and rurally, New Zealand is built of cut, processed wood. The bush often ‘takes back’ by overgrowing outbuildings and fence lines usually through an owner’s abandonment or neglect. Posts are potent symbols in New Zealand representing the conquering, ownership, or colonisation of nature. A sprouting post is more than an enigma; it is a metaphor of the power of nature to overcome all obstacles. An image we humans should take to heart.”
In a playful, trusting collaboration between two artists, the curious multi-coloured and multi-media tower of Apoplexis was created. Working both individually and in partnership, the intuitive act of perforating, carving and stacking of stones became a crucial part of the artwork. As close friends, both artists frame the experience fondly.
The title itself Apoplexis comes from the Greek word meaning ‘stroke’ which was historically used in medical terminology to refer to a rupture or haemorrhage within the body, causing immediate loss of the ability to communicate or move. But the term might also be understood in a more metaphorical sense; referring to the sudden changes, unsettling encounters and tragic circumstances that we may each endure in the course of a lifetime, resulting in a somewhat changed emotional state. Woodward lists some examples; “…the brutal end of a spectacular love affair, the numbing of the mind at the loss of a child, the empty gut after the defeat of a favourite sports franchise, the debilitating effect of embarrassment of a misplaced comment.”
Simon Lewis Wards’ work is synonymous with childhood nostalgia. Of growing up in Aotearoa in the second half of the 20th century, of sweets and games, $1 lolly bags, playing with the neighbourhood kids outside in the long summer evenings, spending all your hard-earned pocket money at the corner dairy and getting hyperactive with your mates.
In the vein of Andy Warhol’s pop art with a kiwiana spin, Wards takes the everyday object - the sweet sugary manufactured processed lollies - and elevates them to the art object. Like Warhol, Wards uses repetition and multiples, both techniques more aligned with the mass production of consumables and household items made in factories than art. Swiss-American sculptor Claes Oldenburg also took manipulated food items, expanding them to an enormous size and elevating them to the level of fine art - a cherry balanced precariously on a spoon, or a piece of cake taking centre stage in the art gallery.
The knucklebones game is one of the iconic children's activities in New Zealand. In America they are called jacks and the game has ancient origins known as astragaloi in Greek and tali in Latin. Wards’ Knucklebones are modelled on sheep knucklebones; apt for Brick Bay where the sheep graze across the farm. The Giant Knucklebones have been tossed down the hill as if in mid-game, landing on the slope where you can climb and relax on them while looking out over the lake.
Simon Lewis Wards’ aesthetic is about having fun and bringing humour into the art world. Like Jeff Koons he deals with popular culture and his work depicts everyday objects which he transports to a new level. His small sculptures are made from glass and porcelain using techniques of casting and slip-casting and his most well known works are his porcelain bags filled with brightly coloured glass jet planes and heart shaped candies.
John Reynolds’ Road Signs might cause you to do a double take. Fluorescent and incongruous to the landscape, they appear almost functional: will we heed their warnings? It’s only when we read their puzzling text and see their placement along the sculpture trail that we can understand them as representing Reynolds’ art practice succinctly. The enduring qualities of his work that continue to draw viewers into his sphere - wit, and restless energy with a conceptual streak and agitation of culture - also confound us. Road signs are easily read by everyone, yet these are disconcerting with their off-centre warnings: Yeah Nah Yeah, Funky Capitalism, Global Weirding, Utopia and Garden of Earthy Delights.
There is no sense to be made in these works. Reynolds seems to enjoy disrupting our search for coherency. Dead-pan humour, juxtapositions and a liking of ‘artless’ objects recalls early modernist explorations into the reverence of ‘high’ art and the subversion of this with found objects. Certainly, Reynolds’ Road Signs are placed in the midst of a dynamic sculpture trail that often undermine the materiality and mundanity of his works with their scale and price-tag. His interest in this juxtaposition of ‘art’ and the ‘familiar’, the hybridity of material or idea (or both), acts as a surprise to us - it poses a problem, a complication, to how we usually view art. Reynolds says of this effect: “It’s a mixture of collude and collide.”
During an artist residency and trip to India in 2017, Natalie Guy encountered the work of British architect and modernist pioneer, Jane Drew. Guy was particularly drawn to an elementary school designed in Chandigarh, 1956, which used a series of loosely interlocking pillars to provide a shield from the sun whilst allowing breeze to flow through.
Guy’s Brise Soleil (Sun Breaker) takes inspiration from Drew’s design whilst referencing the familiar ‘breeze block’ form and exploring how architecture can be both functional and visually captivating. Placed at the foot of the Kauri climb and finished in an iridescent green-gold, Brise Soleil mimics the essential role of trees as resilient wind-blockers and sun-shaders.
Guy explains: “Brise Soleil straddles environmental and climate concerns by jogging memories of modernist architecture whilst de-familiarising them. In this new unexpected context, breeze and shade cannot be controlled.”
Inspired by playing with river stones in the Kerikeri River when he was a child, Chris Booth began to make land art in the form of large scale boulder columns in 1973. Gateway in Albert Park, Auckland and Rainbow Warrior Memorial, Matauri Bay, Northland are the most well known of these sculptures.
Over 40 years later, Earth, Water, Sun demonstrates this essence of collecting and stacking stones, but this time on a smaller scale. In 1997, Booth gathered river and sea worn stones with his late friend and Kai Tahu Whanui kaumatua, Maurice Nutira, from Taumutu, Canterbury, South Island. As Booth recalls: “He was my kaumatua at Lincoln University when I created Te Paepaetapu o Rakaihautu for Lincoln University (which he named with the head of the Centre for Maori Studies and Research, Maurice Gray), and the Christchurch Seattle Sister City sculpture, Taurapa, in central Christchurch.” Earth, Water, Sun is the only other and last sculpture made from these stones gathered back in 1997.
The result is an assemblage of 90 smooth river stones stacked in an elegant column. Using stones of varying density and volume, there is the impression of an organic and idiosyncratic collection, but they are unified in their restful tones of ash, sand and slate, forming an earthy palette. Nestled within the surroundings of neighbouring ferns, nikau palms and lilypads, the structure is subtle and unassuming. Though it stands unwavering, there is the impression that the stones are simply balanced there, and could easily sway in the breeze or tumble to the earth.
Spending longer with the sculpture and walking around it, there is an increased sense of movement within the form, with indications of twisting, turning, tipping and leaning. One feels the presence of the column, its connection to the earth and representation of a local geography - all of which are central to Booth’s work. As curator and art writer Ken Scarlett writes in Woven Stone: The Sculpture of Chris Booth, “In spite of the perils of globalisation, with its potential to homogenise us all, Chris Booth adheres to and nurtures a unique personal vision. Stone - that ancient material - comes alive again in his hands.”
Hybrid Encounters 2020 is situated in a unique part of the trail - an ecosystem of swamp cypresses and waterlilies. Hybrid Encounters 2020 presents eight configurations of different sizes and shapes that are suspended from and attached to the branches and trunks of the swamp cypresses and large Blackwoods at the water's edge.
Corbelletto’s installation is transformed by this particular luscious environment and it is as if there is a new species that has evolved in the forest. The sculptural nets share structural similarities with the organic structures of types of fungi which grow nearby.
Corbelletto generates these sculptures with the same single component replicated and assembled to form different aggregations. It is a language from simplicity to complexity that echoes the process employed by nature to generate an infinite number of variations.
Hybrid Encounters suggests an ambiguous yet at the same time strangely connected relationship with the natural environment. These works are part of an extensive project called Coherent Permutations which focus on the evolution of a single form into a system of interrelated configurations. These can appear at once both highly symmetric and yet biomorphic and free-form. Corbelletto’s work has an abstracted futuristic style which she uses to explore philosophical, scientific and artistic notions.
“Overall the project reflects on how complexity can arise from simplicity, how diversity evolves from singularity and how small modifications can create evolutionary adaptations.”
Hybrid Encounters was nominated by the Italian Embassy to represent New Zealand in Giornata del Contemporaneo – Contemporary Art Day 2020. This initiative is in its 15th year and is hosted by the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums (AMACI).
What does it mean to question the representation of earth, and that of other celestial bodies? Ruth Watson has been working with maps and cartography for over 30 years, exploring the range of perspectives and methodologies applied to the understanding of Earth.
After winning the Wellington Sculpture Trust’s 4 Plinths project, Watson had the opportunity to experiment at large scale, examining existing models of the earth, and of Mars. Other worlds was first exhibited on plinths bordering the forecourt of Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, and we are delighted to present this captivating installation in an expansive natural environment.
As Watson describes, “the bulging white globe shows European space agency gravitational field data, the black globe is based on carbon sequestration data, the grey globe is derived from a 17th century religious view of the world without water, and the Mars globe is based on an early 20th century artefact demonstrating beliefs in a canal system, ‘evidence’ of a superior civilization.”