The Permanent Collection
The works that make up the permanent collection are drawn into a dialogue with an ever-changing environment, subtly shaped by the changing seasons, the growing podocarp forest, the context of other artworks and the influences of time and weather. “They animate the space”, says Curator Melissa Reimer, “as much as the evolving vegetation animates the art works”.
In selecting these works, she says, consideration is given to visual impact, longevity of the materials, site specificity, the personal taste of the owners, and the allegiance to the Garden’s overall goals of sustainability and environmental renewal.
Not all the artworks make a big statement – some are confined, there is a sense of stumbling across them. Others are dramatic and instantly impressive. From the quiet to the dynamic, all resonate with the natural context. There has to be a synergy with the environment.
Ranging from the heroic to the intimate, the collection today is much more than a chance to see art outdoors. This is art to see emblazoned by a sunset or framed by harakeke (native flax), art to walk around, to peer into or gaze up at.
Graham Bennett
Locate (2009)
Stainless steel
Dimensions: 5400×1000×1000 mm
Purchased 2019
Locate is one of three works by Christchurch sculptor Graham Bennett featured in the permanent collection. It is part of a series of works exploring voyaging, navigation and our sense of place. This has been a career-long focus for Bennett that has given rise to works ranging from the intimate to the monumental, now featured in public and private collections in New Zealand, Korea and Japan. These works are open to multiple interpretations. Some can be read as weathervanes, the prows of sailing vessels, old navigation instruments, or segments of the globe. Locate is comprised of a number of elegant steel fins that thrust skyward while remaining anchored to the ground by their supporting poles. As replicated half spheres, the fins may be read as global segments or, perhaps, the hull of a ship.
Graham Bennett
Nine Times (2004)
Powder-coated cast aluminium, steel
Dimensions: 2800×800×800 mm
Purchased 2018 from Annual Autumn Exhibition
Nine Times is part of a larger series exploring ideas around journeying, cultural identity and environmental responsibilities. The nine poles of differing lengths are topped with pod- or waka-shaped forms relating to the longitudinal divisions of the globe, as seen in the towering Reasons for Voyaging (2003) on the forecourt of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and other works from that time.
Although static, the angles and tilt of the variously sized components give a strong sense of dynamism to the work, suggestive of the movement of ocean currents and a reminder of the many journeys of discovery and migration that dispersed early humans across the world. The number nine is significant here, being half of the 18 segments, or gores, that make up maps of the globe. This is our half – Te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
Graham Bennett
None So Blind (2015)
Stainless steel, galvanised steel, ex-tele-communication pole (recycled from Antarctica)
Dimensions: 6300×2000×2000 mm
Commissioned 2014
None So Blind is one of a number of mounted figurative works begun by the artist in 2012 as an exploration of our relationship to – and impact on – the natural environment. One of these, Overview, Overlook, Oversee (2013), was exhibited in the first Annual Autumn Sculpture Exhibition at Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden in 2014. When this was sold, Peter and Annabel approached the artist to commission a new work for a site of his choosing in the emerging sculpture garden.
Unlike that earlier work, None So Blind features two wind-responsive life-sized figures of laser-cut steel pivoting on a tapered pole, arms outstretched in a shiny, unseeing reiteration of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vetruvian man or, in some readings, a Māori kite, mana tukutuku. The work includes “faux clocks” that calibrate time and effort, and a handle, called a “conscience adjuster”, allowing the viewer, explains Bennett, to move the hands on the clock further away from the point of environmental catastrophe: “It adjusts our conscience, which is what we are doing all the time – we are pretending we are in a better situation than we are.”
Bing Dawe
A Landscape With Too Many Holes, Waiting For St Francis – A Gateway (2015)
Bronze and steel
Dimensions: 2800×2700×40 mm
Commissioned 2013
This gateway, from the series A Landscape With Too Many Holes, laments the loss of so much of our indigenous flora and fauna. In these works, black steel wedges serve symbolically as markers in the landscape, like surveying pegs, referencing the claims we make on the land. The bronze birds represent those which still populate this land, while the voids represent those that we have lost.
In this human-scale gateway, or portal, birds are again both present and absent; some attached to – or perched on – the steel framework while others are presented as missing voids. For this work, Dawe has privileged bush birds – tūī, pīwakawaka (fantail), riroriro (grey warbler), tieke (saddleback) and korimako (bellbird). Dawe’s reference to St Francis, the patron saint of animals and the environment, suggests the urgent need for care in order to prevent any further birds from falling into extinction, while also acknowledging the role of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden as an expanding regeneration project. As the artist says, “When the work was first installed it was quite a dominant part of that little section – now the trees have grown, it is more of a gateway down in amongst the trees”.
Inspired by this work, a similar gateway now stands at the Ara Institute of Canterbury, where Dawe taught for many years, and a pīwakawaka sculpture was commissioned for the Lincoln township.
Bing Dawe
Towards repair – Gorse as a nursery – Composition with gorse, NZ beech and tuna, from Hinewai (2022)
Bronze and steel
Dimensions: 3500×1500×300 mm
Commissioned 2019
The ongoing series of works titled Towards Repair examines and celebrates techniques of environmental repair. The most recent work in this series at Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden is a celebration of the restoration of Hinewai Reserve, an ecological restoration project on Banks Peninsula managed by botanist Hugh Wilson. Contrary to long-held views on the destructive nature of gorse, on this 1500-hectare tract of land, gorse has been left to serve as a nursery plant for the regrowth of native flora. In this delicate sculpture, Dawe depicts a red beech (tawhairaunui) growing through and above a base of gorse. Eels (tuna) included in the composition serve to reflect the wider ecosystem and the interdependencies between different species.
Bing Dawe
Wry – Composition with bird and water lifting device (2017)
Bronze and steel
Dimensions: 1230×400×400 mm
Purchased 2020 from Annual Autumn Exhibition
This spare, enigmatic and powerful work features a wrybill (ngutuparore), the small endangered plover which breeds only in the braided rivers of the South Island (Te Wai Pounamu). With a compelling poignancy, this work alludes to the risks faced by these rare birds, not so much by the natural flushing of the rivers, to which they have adapted, but by the lack of flushing and the ongoing impacts of irrigation, water diversion and the spread of introduced plants in the riverbed that provide a ready habitat for predators. The stylised form of the auger, a nod to Leonardo da Vinci’s water-lifting devices, is here an intractable symbol of the human impact on our natural waterways.
Neil Dawson
Kōtare (2022)
Painted stainless steel
Feather dimensions: 5200×900×500 mm
Installed height: 8500 mm
Commissioned 2021 as one of the three winning submissions for the 10th anniversary of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden
Soaring high above the flax, visible from a number of spots around the Sculpture Garden, this luminescent work pays tribute to the beauty of the native kōtare. Also called the New Zealand sacred kingfisher, the kōtare has a shining green-blue back and cap and maniacal laughter and is found in tidal estuaries and mudflats as well as in inland rivers, lake shores and forests. Its habit of perching motionless while stalking its prey, then attacking in a sudden blur, saw it likened by Māori to a sentry.
Neil Dawson has long been fascinated with feathers – the seeming frailty of the structure, the play of light when in flight, the beauty of their colour and texture when woven into traditional garments and the sense of wonder we experience in finding a stray feather on our path. Using laser-cut steel and a scale that magnifies the extraordinary design of these ubiquitous forms, the artist replicates the subtle curve of the shaft, the sheen of the vanes and the tangled curls of the downy barbs in graceful homage to their beguiling paradox of substance and lightness, immobility and movement.
Neil Dawson
Vortex (2016)
Steel, paint
Dimensions: 4400×2300×1000 mm
Commissioned 2014
Installed in 2016, Vortex is a dramatic and dynamic work featuring a golden swirling spiral of swallows (warou), a small passerine bird species that arrived in New Zealand from Australia and which is now seen frequently swooping and flying over the pond overlooked by this work. On selecting this site, easily visible from a number of prominent spots in the garden and from the house, the artist revised his design to create a circular form supported by a hoop that will disappear as the native bush grows up around it. Today, Dawson’s first work for the permanent collection of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden reverberates within its elevated setting, appearing to hover above and against the surrounding landscape in a dynamic momentum of light and swooping movement. Framed by and framing the western sky, its golden form hangs subdued, quietly suspended, in the morning light or glows with a sudden vibrancy in the afternoon sun.
Andrew Drummond
Ngaio (2017), ed. 1/9
Stainless steel, precision roller bearings
Dimensions: 3000×700×700 mm
Purchased 2018
Ngaio is one of a series of elegant wind sculptures made by renowned New Zealand sculptor Andrew Drummond that evoke the detailed play of light and wind on our forest trees (other works in this series include kōwhai, māhoe, ramarama and karo). These works were made following the artist’s close observations of lowland native trees found throughout the landscape, rather than dominating the forest canopy. As the wind picks up, the elegant, species-specific fins turn in a flash of brown patina and gold, so evoking the dance of leaves in a gentle breeze, the glint of filtered sunlight, the fickleness of the wind, the unique structure of the leaves and the cycles of the seasons as the earth slowly turns. As seen in much of Drummond’s kinetic sculpture, these works draw us in closer to attend to and be part of the natural environment, whether it be a slow contemplation of light and movement, or the alluring flash of colour and motion provoking a sense of awe and wonder in our connection with the changing world around us.
Alison Erickson
A room of one’s own (2022)
Bronze on steel plinth
Dimensions: 1800×1000×1000 mm
Commissioned 2018
As with Erickson’s first work for the permanent collection of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, Annabel and Peter gave the artist carte blanche for her second commission. In this characteristically quiet yet poignant work, a seated girl is deeply engrossed in her book, one leg tucked under the other in relaxed absorption. Here, the simple pleasure of reading, the elusive moments of solitude and the thirst for knowledge are revealed as an important and timeless part of childhood. The artist writes, “Here sits a girl, caught up in the simple act of reading. Sometimes this feels to me like a small act of defiance, a tiny revolution against the relentless distraction and manipulation of social media in our daily lives.”
There is also an autobiographical element to this beautifully realised work, as the artist is mother to a young girl who is more drawn to books, nature and time with her horse than to the unrelenting demands of modern technologies.
Alison Erickson
Bureaucracy and the huia (2017)
Bronze
Dimensions: 3880×600×600 mm
Commissioned 2015
A bold and yet enigmatic work, Bureaucracy and the huia features the female huia perched on the head of a male human figure. The last verified sighting of the huia, an extinct species of New Zealand wattlebird, was in 1907, although there were possible sightings right up until the 1960s. Due to its beautiful plumage, the songbird was revered and valued by Māori and Europeans for costumery, and yet protected by neither culture. The desire to possess them for ornamental purposes partly contributed to their extinction. Erickson believes this destructive behaviour and lack of foresight in relation to our natural environment is just as prevalent in contemporary society. In this work specifically, the artist explains, the huia symbolises impermanence and the vulnerability of our greatest assets: our native flora, fauna and waterways.
Bureaucracy here is represented by the figure of a suited man, striding confidently but without caution; quite simply, he’s not looking where he’s going.
True to this artist’s oeuvre, the work is provocative and mysterious in the relationship between the two figures. On the one hand, the huia can be seen to be blessing the man with its presence. On the other, the figure of bureaucracy appears oblivious to the bird’s presence. Yet the fate of the first is utterly reliant on the actions of the latter. A passionate waterways activist, Erickson explains, “the policy makers determine our course and make decisions on our behalf but perhaps they’ve lost sight of whom they are acting for”.
Ben Foster
Infinity (2014), ed. 1/3
Aluminium, exterior sealant, sealed bearings
Dimensions: 3000×900×900 mm
Commissioned 2013
In 2012, while looking for a second commission for the permanent collection of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, Peter and Annabel were alerted to a young artist working in Kaikōura. Drawn to the contemporary clean lines and minimal forms of Foster’s work, they commissioned Infinity, a beguilingly simple, finely crafted kinetic work drawing on artistic and mathematical symbols representing the concept of infinity.
Immaculately rendered in reflective aluminium and proportionally pleasing, Infinity has broad aesthetic appeal. In the landscape at Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, situated on an elevated section of ground, it captures the light and breeze, gently turning so that its silhouette is ever-changing – sometimes suggestive of a leaf form, at other times revealing its universal lemniscate, or figure 8, symbolic shape. Framed against the dramatic nor-west sky, it stands as a gleaming, silent question, a symbol of permanence and universal inquiry.
Natalie Guy
The Genius Loci of the Chapel (2022)
Bronze
Dimensions: 3600×800×640 mm
Commissioned 2021 as one of the three winning submissions for the 10th anniversary of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden
Since 2013 Auckland sculptor Natalie Guy has been using her practice to focus on the early aspirations of modernist art and architectural design. In more recent years, she has narrowed this focus to architectural fragments drawn from the international style of architecture, including architects Jane Drew, Le Corbusier and John Scott.
The Genius Loci of the Chapel depicts a fragment of the south wall of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel in France, a design that would later influence John Scott and Jim Allen’s design for Futuna Chapel in Wellington. Both chapels are notable for their use of modulated light and roughcast concrete. These architectural qualities and the memory of modernist influence are evoked, defamiliarised and distilled in The Genius Loci of the Chapel as a sculptural expression of international modernism’s ongoing impact on Aotearoa New Zealand.
In situ at Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, the work provides unexpected and ever-changing apertures on the landscape – portals through which to see and be seen. Rendered in bronze, it is monumental yet also fragmentary in its form and context within the native landscape. Its scale and medium place it squarely in a long tradition of bronze statuary but its architectural rather than figurative form is unexpected and unarguably contemporary.
Sam Harrison
Veiled Embracing Figures (2022)
Cast bronze on concrete foundation
Dimensions: 1850×510×520 mm
Commissioned 2021 as one of the three winning submissions for the 10th anniversary of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden
Held in a moment of shrouded intimacy, the two veiled figures in this work evoke both a timeless tenderness and the complex history of the naked body in art history. This sculpture is one of a series of works by this artist in which male or female figures are both revealed and obfuscated by swathes of loose fabric fixed in bronze and plaster. The resulting obscurity suggests an act of sensitive discretion on behalf of the artist but also highlights the impenetrability of the experience of the subject. Sited within a small grove, Veiled Embracing Figures invites the viewer to read the embrace through the limited cues of the draped forms.
Veiled Embracing Figures (2022)
Cast bronze on concrete foundation
Dimensions: 1850×510×520 mm
Commissioned 2021 as one of the three winning submissions for the 10th anniversary of Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden
Held in a moment of shrouded intimacy, the two veiled figures in this work evoke both a timeless tenderness and the complex history of the naked body in art history. This sculpture is one of a series of works by this artist in which male or female figures are both revealed and obfuscated by swathes of loose fabric fixed in bronze and plaster. The resulting obscurity suggests an act of sensitive discretion on behalf of the artist but also highlights the impenetrability of the experience of the subject. Sited within a small grove, Veiled Embracing Figures invites the viewer to read the embrace through the limited cues of the draped forms.
Brian High
Ode to Fiordland (2023), ed. 1/7
Photograph on aluminium panel (ACU)
Dimensions: 1220 x 2440mm
Purchased 2023
Millions of years ago, mighty glaciers sculpted the awe-inspiring landscapes of New
Zealand's South Island, carving out fiords, lakes, deep valleys, and vast plains. For photographer Brian High, the artistic prowess of cast glass artist Annabel Menzies-Joyce masterfully mirrors the essence of this ancient geological
ballet, specifically reflecting the mesmerising Fiordland landscape in her creations.
In High’s portrayal of Menzies-Joyce’s sculptures, the azure tones of her glasswork
emulate the pristine basal ice of the Tasman Glacier, mirrored in the waters that now
fill the colossal depressions left by the glaciers' retreat. High writes, "Menzies-Joyce pays homage to the formidable forces that shaped the MacKenzie basin and serve
as a captivating ode to the enduring beauty born from the symbiotic interplay
between nature's grandeur and her artistic interpretation."
Brian High
Waterfall (2023), ed. 1/7
Photograph on aluminium panels (ACU)
Dimensions: 1220×4880mm
Purchased 2023
Water, a source of vitality and wonder, it holds unparalleled importance in sustaining human life. It is a precious resource that not only enables our existence but also possesses an intrinsic beauty that can captivate the human spirit.
In an endeavour to encapsulate the enchanting essence of water, the artist has manipulated and merged various digital photographic images of the same waterfall to evoke a deep appreciation for this life-sustaining element.
Waterfall graces a tranquil enclave within a lush bush area of the sculpture garden, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the vision of cascading waterfalls embraced by verdant ferns—a creation that transforms the surroundings into a serene oasis.
This captivating image, simultaneously illusionary and real, freezes fleeting moments in time, showcasing the ever-shifting form of water. The waterfall captured in the photograph is a composite vision, a harmonious blend of diverse angles and perspectives that portrays the dynamic dance of water as it descends over rocks and through native bush. The intent of the artwork is to inspire a profound connection with water and instil a sense of responsibility in treating this precious resource with the care and respect it deserves.
Mandy Cherry Joass
Te Ao – small cloud (2018)
Repurposed aluminium venetian blinds, rivets
Dimensions: 250×400×300 mm
Purchased 2018 from Annual Autumn Exhibition
Te Ao – small cloud was born out of the artist’s desire to turn a hard, linear, impersonal material – the aluminium slats of the once-ubiquitous venetian blind – into a more gentle, ephemeral form.
Annabel Menzies-Joyce
Bound (2012)
Timaru bluestone and rope
Dimensions: 1400×1100×400 mm
Installed 2012
When Peter spied two large bluestone rocks in the yard of Doug Neil’s studio, he thought they would make perfect gateposts for Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden. Annabel however, had other ideas. Using some mussel farm rope “stolen” from her brother, she bound the two rocks together. The result is a strong, simple, engaging work, suggestive of the long history of human interactions with the environment and ongoing attempts to mend the fractured land.
Annabel Menzies-Joyce
Fertility Goddesses (2013)
An installation of small-scale,
cast glass works
Dimensions: variable, up to
200×100×100 mm
Acquired 2013
In 2013 Annabel presented family members, friends and neighbours with a small lump of clay with which to create their own version of a fertility goddess. From these, she created moulds and began the process of casting the different renditions in glass. After a fire destroyed her studio, she opened the kiln to find the small, jewel-like works had survived. Today, mounted on slim steel rods within a secluded tranquil grove, the tiny icons form a small, quixotic tribute to their natural surroundings – and their survival.
Doug Neil
Canoe (2007)
Timaru bluestone
Dimensions: 750×1600×250 mm
Purchased 2012
The canoe form is rich in real and metaphoric allusions to travel and exploration (of strong relevance to Aotearoa New Zealand), water, personal accomplishment, artistic expression and identity. Doug Neil’s canoe-shaped works, small and large, stand as if imprinted with the natural processes of environmental change. In the sinuous carved lines, they mirror the motion of tussock grasses, the strong nor-westers that buffet the Canterbury region, the braiding of a river and ripples in water, as if etched by these forces rather than by the artist. These connotations of current- and wind-powered movement serve as a counterpoint to the unmoving materiality of the bluestone.
Doug Neil
The Rocks (2013)
Timaru bluestone
Dimensions: variable, up to 3700×1800×1500 mm
Commissioned 2010
Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden’s first commission stands as an ancient henge of hewn and etched rock. Up to nearly four metres in height, they are carved and rutted works, shaped with hard, diamond-tipped tools and grouped together like monolithic remnants from an ancient past. As boulders of Timaru bluestone, a local form of volcanic basalt, they stand as a testament to the eruption of Mt Horrible about two million years ago, when a sheet of lava flowed over about 130 square kilometres before cooling into long bluffs and ridges. In their pitted and pleated surfaces, towering over the ponds, they also stand as historic edifices, marked by time, weather and a sculptor’s tools, suggestive of a human intention long since lost in its meaning.
Doug Neil
Canyon (2022)
Timaru bluestone
Dimensions: variable, up to 3900×1500×1500 mm
Commissioned 2021
In 2021 Peter presented Doug with an unusual commission, a collection of unmarked rocks of various sizes to serve as natural gallery walls between which visitors may pass on their passage through Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden. Naturally pitted and scarred, the resulting earthwork comprises 14 large and four smaller rocks. It is the archetypal blank canvas or unadorned canyon wall, a naturally aged substrate on which future artists may draw, carve or affix smaller works in a communal and ongoing exhibition of art.
Pauline Rhodes
Flow Boat 1 & 2 (2007)
Marine grade polished stainless steel and flexi hose
Dimensions: 350×4000×830 mm & 270×4000×670 mm
Purchased 2022
Following a visit to Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, Canterbury sculptor Pauline Rhodes proposed Flow Boats for its ninth Annual Autumn Exhibition. Originally part of a series of three stainless steel “boats” (the artist has kept the third), their sleek, immaculately executed tangled shapes evoke the quietude of gliding on a still lake or river. Yet their open skeletal forms, a dramatic foil for the lush native vegetation in which they sit, render them inoperable as boats. This very impracticality provokes a sense of mystery and intrigue – have they been abandoned in mid-progress? Have they run aground? Are they wreckages? Are they to be read in the context of the actual and metaphorical connotations of traditional voyaging vessels?
Nestled in the rushes beside the lowest of the three ponds – sometimes partially submerged in water; sometimes dry – they also suggest the fleetingness of human history, evidence of environmental change and, as indicated by the jumble of hoses within the steel frames, the precariousness of our waterways. As such, they may be read as a quiet, almost allegorical, call to action.
