A beautiful site to share a secret

By LINDA HERRICK

The Mahurangi Group's annual show has a dual purpose. First, it showcases the considerable talents of its members who all live and/or work in the Rodney district, near Warkworth and Mahurangi.

There are some rather big names at play here: sculptors Terry Stringer, Barry Lett and Peter Oxborough; potters Len Castle and Robyn Stewart; photographer Ian McDonald, who is this year's guest of the collective; silversmith Florian Primbs, furniture-maker Robin Pendred and his wife, Valerie, a painter and print-maker.

And, with the show held each year at a different site, the group is sharing a secret, sending out an invitation to visit a special place in the district.

The first show was in the old Edwardian Warkworth primary school, resited to the Pendreds' private land in Hepburn Creek Rd.

Last year the exhibition found a home in sculptor Stringer's magnificent Zealandia sculpture garden in Mahurangi West Rd.

Now they're going out on a limb, to the tip of the long thin finger of land stretching down the eastern side of Mahurangi Harbour, and the picturesque historic building called Scott's Landing Homestead.

With the homestead surrounded by water - the harbour on one side, Te Kapa River on the other - the artists have called the show On a High Tide, creating work that has some resonance with the sea.

Oxborough, who lives on Te Kapa estuary, uses stainless steel, wood, bronze and stone to make pieces with maritime themes: sails, waves, channel markers.

Valerie Pendred's linocuts and gouache paintings have a boat theme, while Robin Pendred has created three pieces of furniture which are "cradled", akin to a ship's cradle while in dry dock. Guest Ian McDonald, who lives in Whangateau, has a strong interest in the environment and his sealed large-scale forest photograph will be displayed in the grounds outside the homestead, which is owned by the Auckland Regional Council.

Primbs has created pieces of distinctive silver jewellery for the show, while Stewart has worked up clay anchor stones, which are burnished before firing. A close canine relative of Lett's Large Thin Watch Dog, standing guard in Waiheke's sculpture walkway, has travelled to Scott's Landing, and Stringer has made a full-scale figure which will also stand in the garden. Castle, whose lifetime achievements were acknowledged in a book published by architect Ron Sang, will add "sea secrets" ceramics.

The group has also borrowed works from Auckland's Ferner Gallery by some rather famous artists from the past with links to the region: John Kinder, Olivia Spencer-Bower, Eric Lee-Johnson, Charles Blomfield and Helen Brown.

* On a High Tide, Scott's Landing, Friday to February 6; the southern tip of Mahurangi East Rd via Warkworth.