KEY POINTS:
Sculptor Terry Stringer says goodbye for now to his so-called "Mountain Fountain" in Aotea Square as Auckland City Council prepares for a two-year renovation project.
The fountain, which has been a magnet for skateboarders for 27 years, will not return to the same spot when the renovations are completed.
"The square will have a different set of agendas," says Stringer, who is based in Mahurangi. "One of the needs is a performance space from the terraces at the front of the centre down to an audience in the square, so it is finding a new place.
"The skateboarders are particularly attached to it and the pavement started to crumble around it so the council went to the trouble of reinforcing the edges with steel so they could keep on using it. One of the plans was to keep it on the hard surface when it comes back, but I quite like the idea of pushing it half on to the grass so the water can have a relationship with the grassy area and be a bit more dynamic."
Stringer was awarded the commission to create the sculpture in 1979, when the Auckland Savings Bank (now the ASB Bank) donated the costs as a gift to the city.
It was installed and unveiled in 1981 - with the banal title The Aotea Square Water Feature, which still makes Stringer laugh.
The work went into a square which, at the time, had no Aotea Centre or SkyCity Cinema complex to frame it.
"When I was first involved with it, it was a very non-defined space, so my sculpture had a non-symmetrical form," says Stringer.
"It couldn't relate to anything in particular, so it picked up on the symmetry of the square. I was trying to create a miniature volcanic mountain thrusting up through the plate of the square, with a water pouring down sensation."
Stringer is off to Portland, Oregon, on Sunday where he is having his third exhibition of sculptures at the Beppu Wiarda Gallery. He has created 10 small bronze pieces for the show. The Mountain Fountain, in comparison, is "large by my standards", he laughs.
