Sculpture to bridge old and new eras

Auckland Art Gallery's main atrium roof which is made from 11 kauri pods. Photo / Natalie Slade

A large work by Danish artist Jeppe Hein will fill Auckland Art Gallery's new sculpture terrace.

Gallery director Chris Saines said the work was for the new area built between Albert Park and the roof of the 1915-17 East Gallery.

Hein, who has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Tate Liverpool, uses motors, mirrors and fountains in some of his sculptures and installations.

Saines cannot reveal the nature, name or look of the new work but he said the walkway was a significant addition to the gallery, connecting old buildings to new.

The terrace not only allows proximity to the park but gives visitors a close-up view of the Kitchener/Wellesley clock tower and the ornate roof of the original art gallery buildings, he said.

Saines said 17 floors in the old buildings would become just six in the new, making life easier for staff who have had to endure Dickensian facilities for years, including inadequate loading areas and a tiny goods lift.

"Moving art around will be much easier," he said.

The gallery's $121 million restoration and expansion, a collaboration by Richard Francis-Jones' FJMT (Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp) in Sydney and Auckland's Archimedia, will not open until the middle of next year.

Hand-crafted Kauri pods clad the roof of the new waterfront-end extension to the gallery.

Entire trees which had fallen in the North Island, particularly around the Coromandel, were cut into pieces on-site then air-lifted out by helicopter, Saines said.

A team of 30 cabinet makers at Papakura Joinery have worked on the pods for the past 18 months.

But Saines said designing and executing the curved structures was complicated and demanded close co-operation between Archimedia and the joinery factory. Saines said the pods were a work of art in their own right.