The Waikato Sculpture Trust
Sculpture in the Park 2009: curated by Rob Garrett
The Sculpture Park @ Waitakaruru Arboretum
207 Scotsman Valley Rd, Tauwhare, 15km east of Hamilton
10.00 am till dusk
Until February 28

The Waikato Sculpture Trust's latest curated show features 27 works by 24 New Zealand sculptors.

This year’s summer exhibition showcases a wide range of work, including an interactive piece by emerging artist Aaron McConchie. Fire II is a synergy of topical themes, guns, power (solar), recycling, innovation and the classic Kiwi ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos.

Ian Boyle has built a living teepee high on an open slope. This is a work that will alter over time as the willow saplings grow and is a space designed to be entered into and engaged with.

Some sculptures are in bright single colours that stand out against the colours of vegetation and rock and soil. Others contrast through their large size or incongruity: Still others suggest fanciful worlds that transport the imagination: spiraling butterflies cut from steel.

Some works have been chosen because they suggest that gardens and forests might be secret, mysterious, disturbing or spiritual places.

This year Bernie Harfleet (pictured) won an art award for six sculptures in the form of children’s coffins. He is a member of the Habeas Corpus Collective and winner of this year’s Harkness Henry Lawyers art award.

His winning piece is titled Bears and references the song, If you go down to the woods today…

Curator Rob Garrett was delighted to accept work by this collective, who make art works that address global violence (wars), economic inequalities and hardship, domestic violence, violence toward children and other forms of child abuse.

Harfleet has made six coffins, each representing an actual New Zealand child who has been killed at the hands of one or more people who were responsible for their care and upbringing.

Each coffin has a simple plaque made of metal with the child’s details, but without names, stamped into them. They are a bit like the identification details stamped into a soldier’s “dog tag.”

Garrett says:

The irony here of course, is that unlike soldiers who are trained to put themselves in harm’s way, these children were the unwilling and unwitting victims of violent caregivers and a dysfunctional society. The sculptures are beautiful and yet tragic memorials to lost lives and a reminder to adults of their responsibilities.

The award panel comprised Penny Jackson (Tauranga Art Gallery), Garrett and Lynden Earl (Harkness Henry Lawyers).

Penny Jackson found Harfleet’s work emotive and edgy:

...the setting is so picturesque and tranquil, yet the lives these children led was the opposite. It's as if these deceased children, for which the coffins are symbols, never got to play innocent games or just run free without other factors, or people, unsettling them.

They didn't get those good old Kiwi childhoods that we're suppose to proffer in this so-called "land of milk and honey." It's a very powerful installation and the way the coffins are arranged in a one-way line, making you walk by each and every one, reinforces the enormity of the problem.

Harfleet’s work is one part of the collective’s offering and sits alongside the work of Jude Nye and Donna Sarten, each of whom tackle the theme of abused and disadvantaged children in their own unique way.

Each artwork has been placed carefully so as to present the natural variety of the Sculpture Park in a new light. Among the surprises are several works that reference or actually make sounds as well as kinetic works.