Article and picture courtesy of www.nzlive.com
There is a disturbing moment in Peter Coates's documentary charting the construction and installation of Tanya Ashken's Albatross in Wellington's Frank Kitts Park in 1986. A crane elevates the mammoth sculpture above the head of building foreman Gary Hogan, who seizes the opportunity to beat back its exposed reinforcing rods.
It is soon discovered that the weight of the sculpture had been grossly miscalculated. It could not be supported by the crane, or the first of two replacements brought on for the job. Ashken refers to the enlisted cranes as 'the three bears'.
This is one of those great 'what-if moments'. It could have been New Zealand's first death by public sculpture. British artist Maurice Agis is currently facing manslaughter charges after his inflatable work Dreamspace reared 20 meters into the Durham sky with tragic consequences.
Wellington's much-celebrated public art would have had a very inauspicious start if the crane had not held its load. Albatross was the first project of the Wellington Sculpture Trust, set up by Dr Ian Prior and Henry Lang to support Ashken's quest to produce a modern public sculpture for the city. The Sculpture Trust has gone on to advance a vision of Wellington as 'a city for sculpture'. It has commissioned a series of significant public sculptures, most notably in the Botanic Gardens, along Lambton Quay, and on the Cobham Drive gateway to the city from the airport.
Two needs: site and funding
Ashken's experience with Albatross highlights the important role now played by the Sculpture Trust as a commissioner and advocate for public art. Ashken faced the daunting twin tasks of finding a site and securing funding for the project. Looking back over this process she now says 'how I had the nerve to do this I have no idea.'
Wellington City Council town planner Ken Clarke soon came on board. He promised to secure a prime site for the sculpture if the fundraising was successful. Prior and Lang took over the onerous task of securing funding. They converted friends and wealthy contacts to the cause of public art during a meeting at the Wellington Club.
Ashken's project quickly gained momentum. The tricky question of site was still to be resolved. Composer Douglas Lilburn objected to a proposal to place Albatross in the carpark of the Michael Fowler Centre. He argued that the 'music' of this water sculpture would be lost in the traffic and noise of the city.
Lilburn's observation reveals a key factor in this mobilisation of forces around Albatross and public sculpture in Wellington at this time. The 1980s was a period of major demolition and rebuilding of the city. Public sculpture offered one way in which art and culture could be integrated into this changing urban fabric.
According to Henry Lang, 'Too many cities cater only to the material needs of their citizens. The completion of the first project by the Wellington Sculpture Trust shows that the visual and aesthetic aspects of Wellington are also being remembered'.
Albatross gives sculptural form to these ideals, offering a counter-cultural challenge to the mechanical cranes that had long presided over the city. It was soon recognised that the sculpture would be best situated near the lagoon of Frank Kitts Park. Here its organic, abstracted shapes and gleaming white surfaces reflect the water and echo the evocative harbour-side environment.
The changing waterfront
Albatross was an artistic stake-in-the-ground made during this period of rampant rebuilding. Yet it has also contributed to the redevelopment of the Wellington waterfront. Ashken remembers the waterfront as a once dreary and depressing place, regulated by gates, fences, carparks, and a bank of rat-infested toi toi. She takes great pleasure in the evolution of the waterfront into one of the city's most highly cherished public spaces, and the role Albatross has played in this process. Through all the subsequent redevelopment Albatross 'was never moved, everything has moved around it'.
Ashken is clear about the importance of Albatross to her practice. She claims: 'When people don't know me or who I am, I explain that I did that and then they know the sculpture, they understand what I do.'
In many ways, the much-loved Albatross says the same things about Wellington as a city.
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Article by Aaron Lister. Aaron is the Exhibitions Curator at the National Library of New Zealand and is one of the co-editors of Wellington: A City For Sculpture, published by Victoria University Press in 2007.
Image: Tanya Ashken, Albatross, ferro-cement, 1986, Frank Kitts Park. Courtesy of the Wellington Sculpture Trust.
