KEY POINTS:
* What: Headland Sculpture on the Gulf
* Where and when: To Feb 15, daily 9am-6pm; take the ferry to Waiheke, walk or catch the bus to the exhibition.
* www.sculptureonthegulf.co.nz
Last Sunday it was just a few days ahead of gala opening of the fourth biennial sculpture show on Waiheke Island.
This is the nuts-and-bolts time of the exhibition: wheelbarrows, spades, string lines, a stuttering lawnmower, mysterious clearings in the kikuyu, mounds of dirt, builders' mix, heaps of sod, tents and footings hint at things to come.
It's hot despite a cool wind and the workers around the track - the artists and their helpers - are stripped to singlets and work clothes, frowning in concentration, oblivious to the spectacular scenery of the headland south of Matiatia Bay and the whip-and-chase of cloud and light across the water.
Anticipation is honed by anxiety: this is it, the moment when, after days, months and years of planning and shaping, the workshop has been left behind and the pieces stand at last in the setting for which they were designed.
By day's end there are 11 works partially or wholly in place. A nest of highly-polished coloured balls rests enigmatically in a grassy hollow: this is Meiling Lee's Migrating Globes. Not far away, Lucy Bucknall's Special Forces on Patrol are massing on a northern slope, meerkat soldiers with tiny bronze guns, rocket launchers, backpacks and binoculars scan the eastern horizon.
Further around the hill, looking west towards the city, Nic Moon's Monument, a henge-like circle of crosscut saw blades, pays homage to the island's late Don Chapple and his planting of the Forest and Bird reserve in Matiatia valley. The destructive potency of the blades is defused by the incised patterns of the foliage and bark of the native plants they once toppled.
Light is a defining element in this environment and notably a component of several of these works, undermining their solidity and that of the world they reflect. Atop the headland Leon van den Eijkel's purple and aqua Cross (Road) 2009 forms a chunky lustrous X that mirrors the clouds above, and around the way, Chris Hargreaves' A Leap into the Void: Reflections of Immaterial Sensitivity is a gleaming diving board hanging perilously close to the cliff edge.
As we watch, a cloud scuds across the sun, enlivening the waters below: the underside of the board, a mirror, loses its hard edges and becomes shimmering and animate, absorbed by the sky and sea.
A little further on, the intricately-shaped stainless steel arms of Tony Bond's Device for Gauging Solerance are softer but only a little less reflective, coloured and shaped by the sky, as are the striking glossy black circles and strokes of the last exhibit on the trail, Graham Snowden's Array.
Other works are tantalisingly suggestive, one concealed beneath protective wrapping, one so heavy it requires a hiab for lifting into position and still another that is a cluster of bolts awaiting answering pieces.
Today these works are discrete objects in a song that's as yet a scatter of fragmented notes, but by Thursday the spaces between them were filled and they have become part of the whole, the exhibition itself.
The barrows, spades and string lines have gone and the sculptures will seem as permanent as the rocks on the shore.
In all, 26 of New Zealand's leading sculptors will be represented along the
2km route. As we walk from one to the next and as the views of valley, coast and gulf unfold behind them, they converse, combine, overlap and interact with each other and we will carry our pleasure in their visual humour, skill and artistry around the trail and away with us.
