Auckland exhibition NZ Sculpture OnShore opens with 120 artworks for sale

Visitors are encouraged to take selfies or record videos alongside Whakaruruhau and share them on social media, to help raise awareness and spark conversations about family violence and the importance of community action.

All the sculptures are for sale, with proceeds going to Women’s Refuge NZ. To date, more than $2.6 million has been raised for the victims of domestic violence since the exhibition was launched in 1996 in a private garden in Takapuna, and transferred to Operetu Fort Takapuna in 2004 as it grew in popularity.

Artists taking part in this year’s exhibition come from Ahipara in the Far North to Arrowtown in the South Island, displaying a wide range of styles and interpretations.

Visitors will be invited to climb an interactive artwork by Whangārei artist Peter Brammer, part of his Thoughts of Freedom sculpture, a staircase surrounded by a series of symbolic corten steel wings, some up to 5m high.

Auckland artist Ngaroma Riley says her Kapahaka Queen is a “shout-out to all the aspiring kapa haka queens; the ones who live and breathe haka, who learn the words on the bus, sign the waiata in the shower, practise their pūkana [facial expression] in the mirror, and give their heart and soul to every performance”.

Nineteen works in this year’s exhibition are by South Island artists, including Bryn Jones, from Dunedin, with The Wake, a 3m-long fibreglass whale; and Christchurch artist Justin Galligan’s The Absentee, a group of 4.4m-high chairs made of steel that are each light enough to carry.

Two artists invite viewers to face, rather than avoid, the “elephant in the room” with towering works. Clevedon artist Jorge Wright has created Facing Our Elephants, a 2.5m-high and 3.5m-wide mother with her baby in corten steel.

On display in one of the fort’s gun emplacements is Whangārei artist Kristin Kay’s ceramic What Elephant?

This year’s event includes about a dozen sculptures by Māori artists, including works by three members of the Rotorua-based Kemp family: master carver Joe Kemp presents Hinemoana, guardian of the waterways surrounding Operetu; Kemp’s partner Sherie Kemp exhibits Ngā Whetū O Matariki, comprising nine sculptural rocks depicting the Matariki star constellation; and their son Teimah Kemp with the 1.6m-high Hei Tiki, depicting new life, carved from Ōamaru stone.

The site’s underground fort will again host the Auckland schools’ exhibition, featuring works by 20 primary, intermediate and high schools. Included in the exhibition is Ngā Mata Pūrakau: The Faces of Legends, a collaborative mask-making project involving Takapuna Grammar Year 9 students mentoring younger pupils from primary schools across the Devonport peninsula. It is one of the rare occasions on which the public can access the historic fort and tunnels.

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