Artists take on the West

By DEBORAH DIAZ

Kids are all over the taniwha in Vitasovich Ave, making yahoo by the roadside near Henderson's shopping mall.

This sculpture has been made for climbing; the friendly invitation signalled by the handprints of 1000 local children set into the creature's skin.

The story goes that one child who came to make such an impression had only one hand, and insisted on making a mould of the missing limb's stump. This piece of resin was placed at the sculpture's heart.

There's more to public art than meets the public eye.

This is especially true out in Waitakere, where art may soon be as "Westie" as the petrolheads and tree-huggers the city is renowned for.

The local council has decreed that artists should get equal status with architects, landscape designers and city planners when it comes to designing public space or buildings.

It's a radical policy. Artists usually decorate walls rather than ponder how high or how long they should be.

"As far as we know, when it comes to this level of collaboration, what we're doing is unique," says the council arts advisor, Naomi McCleary.

It means adding an artist to the project teams who dream up public facilities, which by nature are budget rather than aesthetically driven.

The policy has been evolving for almost a decade, and the city's now dotted with artworks showing the different phases of its development. Construction on the first building to get the full treatment, the Massey Library in Don Buck Rd, is due to start next year.

It all started in 1991, two years after Waitakere City was founded in the municipal divvy-up of the Auckland region's boroughs. Out of Waitakere's self-declared "eco-city" status grew a commitment to supporting local artists whose work fostered the area's new identity.

Environmental themes dominate the mostly one-off artworks of that era, including the famous algae-inspired sculptures by Lisa Higgins on the Titirangi roundabout, which soon became a landmark for travellers heading to Piha or Karekare.

The warm-hearted taniwha's innards were shaped from old tyres, while two bullocks across the road in Hart Domain were made from 62 shopping trolleys dredged up in a community clean-up of Oratia Stream.

The mid-90s brought a slight shift in focus: environmentally sustainable cities are high-density, packing people into public spaces and putting pressure on everything from loos to bus shelters.

McCleary became an advocate for a greater role for artists in the design of the functional and mundane, but it was about more than simply adding an aesthetic quotient to facilities the council had to build anyway.

"I've always believed that artists are the visionaries in society. They can tell us a lot about who we are and where we've come from," she says.

The council was sympathetic to her view. Mayor Bob Harvey says, "Creativity is good for people. It nurtures them to be a beautiful city."

The turning point came in the form of a footbridge.

Artist Virginia King and council staff were teamed up in 1997 to build the Rewarewa Bridge, which links Hugh Brown Drive with Caspian Close in New Lynn. It went on to win regional and national design awards. "People could finally see what we'd been talking about," says McCleary.

The following year, the Sites Pacific symposium brought artists, engineers, landscape architects and planners together to work on enlivening public spaces. It led to the incorporation of arts criteria into the planning of all major city facilities and a place for artists in project teams.

It is an approach that Creative New Zealand would like other local authorities to emulate, with Waitakere's policy being used in "best practice guidelines."

John Edgar - a jeweller and sculptor who worked with city engineers on a second bridge, at Falls Park in Henderson - describes how the collaboration changes the design process.

"I'd suggest something and they'd come back. I'd ask, 'What's the decking like?' They'd say, 'It could be steel or wood.' I'd say, 'Wood is good, something nice and solid to walk on. I'd like it to have thick planks.'

"They'd say, 'How about macrocarpa? We can get that, and it's a sustainable resource.'

"It was never a form of compromise. They were encouraging and went out of their way to make things happen. All my ideas got better as we went; it was a brilliant process."

The bridge, McLeods Crossing, arches into a canopy of trees and opens up an unexpected view of Oratia Stream.

"That pool is a very historic place in Henderson," says Edgar. "You can imagine Maori using it, and ever since Pakeha arrived it's been a swimming and fishing hole. You can anchor there at full tide. Standing on top of the bridge is a bit like standing on the bow of a ship, and if there was a yacht there you could wave to them.

"No one walks right over the bridge. Everybody stops and sits down." More ambitious projects are under way, with the New Lynn Community Centre and the Massey Library in the design phase.

The budgets for the new buildings allow $50,000 specifically for arts projects, but more money can be "borrowed" if essential items already budgeted for - such as lighting, flooring or furniture - can be turned into works of art.

Artist Kate Wells, on the design team for the library, says it gives an incentive to be innovative within the existing budget.

Many ideas for the library, a "wholesome, rugged buildlng," sprang from research into Massey's former kauri forests, the loggers that cleared them and the gum-diggers who came to live there.

"It [the library] has got some connection to the whole history of the place. That's been enjoyable to me, and it's also reflected in the shape of the building and the materials."

The result will be a building that perhaps couldn't have been built anywhere except West Auckland, which, says Naomi McCleary, is what it is all about.

"I'd like art to be fully integrated into the city's fabric so that people come to accept and expect it. Sport is a given - you wouldn't design a city without playing fields or parks, why shouldn't it be the same for art?"