Sydney's symbolic gift to Christchurch sits in storage while site negotiations continue

Eight years after Neil Dawson's Fanfare (dubbed the disco ball) was suspended from the Sydney Harbour Bridge to celebrate the arrival of the 2005 New Year, it will be reinstalled in Christchurch - that is when the location has been agreed upon. SCAPE Biennale director Deborah McCormick, says it should be sited beside a freeway at the Northern entrance to the city as it requires an expansive space and would create a striking welcome to the city. Dawson also favours the freeway site where he hopes it will "become a celebration and an icon of the dynamic, cultural city we are building," but the Christchurch City Council says other sites should be investigated, including the city centre and the airport.

Fanfare was gifted to Christchurch by the city of Sydney in 2007, but has remained in storage as the search for a site began. "The Council had no idea this gift would be so symbolic," said Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore. "It feels appropriate that this centerpiece of our celebrations should return to New Zealand to help inspire the people of Christchurch as they rebuild."  
Image: Neil Daswon's Fanfare (2004), Sydney Harbour Bridge. Photo: Russell Hoore

Neil Dawson's Ferns

In our fourth public art post we put the spotlight once again on Neil Dawson. Situated in Wellington's City Square, Ferns floats like a celestial body above the surrounding buildings and pedestrians alike. 

Image: Neil Dawson, Ferns, Wellington City Square, 1998

Neil Dawson's Echo

In the second of our posts on public art we look at Neil Dawson's Echo. Displaying a subtle orientation and reverence for site, Echo is one of the best pieces of public art in the country. Suspended 8m above the centre of the north quadrangle of the Christchurch Arts Centre, Echo appears to be drawn in the sky. As you walk around the quadrangle and look up the perspective reverses itself. At one moment the front of the building is seen from below and the next instant the view changes and the building is seen from above.

While Dawson is arguably our most experienced maker of public artworks, he is rarely consulted by the agencies that provide policy frameworks and funding for public art. Go figure.

Images: Neil Dawson, Echo, 1981, installation views, Christchurch Arts Centre

Rethinking public art

Like many international cities, Auckland has a lot of public art - some good, some bad, some very very bad. The city's public art programmes are administered by the Auckland City Council which proudly proclaims: "Throughout central Auckland city there is an extensive collection of public art works including sculptures, statues, monuments, fountains, water features, mosaics and murals." Not a very promising start. Nor is there much comfort to be gained from other aspects of the ACC's public art positioning statement on its growing collection of over 200 works "reflecting the city's unique identity, its cultural heritage, telling its stories." 

Storytelling about place, culture and identity is now associated with Te Papa The Museum of New Zealand and the privileging of social history exhibitions over contemporary art, so the art world gets jumpy whenever it encounters this kind of Te Papa-ish rhetoric. However there is a new broom in the Council's public art locker and things are about to change. Recently Pontus Kyander took up the position of Manager of Public Art for the city, supported by an advisory committee of artists and independent curators/writers chaired by art consultant Trish Clark. Kyander's background as an art critic, independent curator, editor of FORMAT (a contemporary arts programme for Swedish Television) and guest professor at EWHA University, Seoul suggests we can look forward to a less pedestrian art commissioning programme in the future. We'll keep an eye out for Kyander's public art interventions, but in the meantime Neil Dawson's Echo at the Christchurch Arts Centre continues to provide a great benchmark for NZ artists and commissioners working in the public art arena.

Images: Neil Dawson, Echo, 1982, installation views, Christchurch Arts Centre