KEY POINTS:
A dramatic view of Rangitoto, concrete gun emplacements and an 1880's fort: that's usually what is on display at the Fort Takapuna Historic Reserve in Devonport. But from this Friday, sculptures of all shape and form will spring up throughout the reserve that overlooks Auckland's majestic Hauraki Gulf as part of the 2008 NZ Sculpture Onshore exhibition.
The mammoth exhibition, curated by Rob Garrett, will feature more than 100 specially made sculptures from key emerging artists and already established local sculptors including Peter Lange, Charlotte Fisher and Paul Dibble. Each piece on display will be for sale, with funds going towards the New Zealand Women's Refuge (the previous exhibition raised an impressive $300,000). Viva talks to three talented young female artists who are set to create a stir at this year's exhibition with their unique animalistic sculptures.
SASKIA BAETENS VAN GILS
From spending the Saturdays of her childhood filling the boot of her father's Skoda with scrap metal to spending hours in a darkroom developing photos with her mother, artist Saskia Baetens Van Gils has always been surrounded by art. Her father would later meld the metal into creatures in his workroom, and her older sister Dominiek's burgeoning love of poetry even led to a first collaboration at the age of six.
"Dominiek would always be reading and writing poems, so I had to do something else. This led to our first collaborative piece. She wrote the poems and I did the drawings, and we had this published into a little book," says Baetens Van Gils, who works as an architect with Hillery Priest Architecture in addition to her sculpting work.
Growing up in a creative household usually leads to creativity in later life, and Baetens Van Gils' household seemed especially art-focused. "My parents were and are very interested and active in the arts, even when we were very little they would take us to whatever was happening: theatre, opera, dance, music, exhibitions, museums," says Belgian born Baetens Van Gils, who moved to New Zealand with her family at the age of nine.
She studied at Elam at Auckland University, and occasionally works as a gallery assistant at Ponsonby Road's Muka Gallery.
As for her own narrative of work, Baetens Van Gils says it relates to the "playful interpretation of identity, understanding of the body, fictionalising its situation and essence. I seek to add humour to the humanoid form making things as they might be rather than the way we believe they should be."
Her one-off bronze sculpture for Sculpture OnShore is called Time Out, and she describes it as "an integration and co-capsulation of a gregarious, burrowing, plant-eating mammal with long ears, long hind legs and a short tail, in and relating to the humanoid form."
In layman's terms?
It's a very cute, big bronze bunny rabbit.
LUCY BUCKNALL
A little caravan in Wiltshire, England was the making of Lucy Bucknall. It was here, next to the studio of her "humble, open-minded and funny" mentor, sculptor Sean Crampton, that she lived for around five years, learning the art of gas welding with phosphor bronze, as his apprentice. "He was an old man in his 80s, with one leg, a decorated war hero and well-respected sculptor still accepting jobs all over the country," says Bucknall, who majored in sculpture at the Bath Academy of Art in the UK.
"The problem for him though was that he was under orders from his osteopath to stop welding so basically I constructed the pieces under his guidance, working from his drawings, earning little money initially but with time picking up a skill that I have come to love."
Bucknall moved to New Zealand in 1998 to live with her Kiwi husband, and has quickly established herself in the art scene, holding solo shows, winning awards and setting up `Starting Art', a course for adults. "Being an artist can be quite isolating and teaching gives me valuable time with like-minded people."
Bucknall's signature work involves fabricated welded bronze sculptures, shaped into the forms of familiar items and characters, but sometimes she will also work with paint: "It gives a more immediate, spontaneous result, unlike sculpture where the material dictates one's speed of process."
Bucknall looks to global media for inspiration, using modern symbols such as weaponry and sunglasses.
"I like to think that my work puts a new spin on aspects of human existence that are usually avoided or taken for granted."
Her bronze works often use animal forms; the one-off sculpture for Sculpture OnShore is no exception. Entitled Jackal and his Rider, it is a piece about global conflict and destruction of native habitats that Bucknall says developed from articles she read about child soldiers in the Congo. "It draws on issues of control, of innocence, of relationships. It's ambiguous, casually horrific," she says. That translates into a haunting bronze figure of a jackal covered in explosives. "The portrayal of an animal as human adds a strange poignancy," she says. "I've always been fascinated by animals."
CAT AUBURN
"I'm fascinated by Victorian exploitation and the commercialisation of freaks," says artist Cat Auburn. "It reminds me that, no matter how far we have come in our attitude towards difference, there will always be this dark part of us that wants to stare and enjoys a spectacle." No doubt Auburn's piece for Sculpture OnShore will create a bit of a spectacle as well. Named after conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, who rose to fame in the 1930s after touring the vaudeville circuit as a sideshow act, Auburn's sculpture of a conjoined female deer with two heads and four incredibly long graceful looking legs examines exploitation.
So why choose a figure of a deer? "I use animal figures in my sculptures not for the literal intention of depicting an animal, but because, as humans we often use animals to personify human traits... for example, I've chosen a deer because of the associations with fragility, vulnerability, submission and fear." Auburn's work often looks to the vulnerable and wistful: past pieces have included a polystyrene figure of a lion, a large glass box tied with a satin ribbon, and an oversized unicorn on its hind legs.
Auburn's love of art began young, but she never saw it being a viable career choice until visiting New York seven years ago. "I was ravenous to be challenged, but I didn't see the potential for this to happen for me in art until I was out of high school. I was in New York and happened to get dragged along to a Gauguin retrospective at the National Gallery. To see one person's life achievements gathered together and the obvious passion for his art despite the hardship completely blew my mind. I signed up for art school as soon as I got back to New Zealand."
Auburn has never looked back, and since graduating from Elam School of Fine Arts and discovering that she does her "best thinking and problem solving in 3D", has quickly been touted as an exciting emerging talent, possibly due to her refreshing non-pretentious view of art. She describes her own work as a story: "It involves no trickery or deceit, it tries to let you in so you can see how it is constructed and you can see the narratives for yourself.
You can see the materials, you can look through the layers and see where I've sliced and glued and sanded, it's not masked by paint. I'm not a magician, I made this with my own hands for you to think about."
* Sculpture OnShore runs from November 7 to 16 at Fort Takapuna Historic Reserve, Vauxhall Road, Devonport. The exhibition is open from 10am to 6pm everyday, and admission is $10 per adult. For more information, visit www.sculptureonshore.co.nz.
