Tall order
Ronnie van Hout’s artwork at Potters Park in Mt Eden, Auckland, is a massive undertaking in scale and skill.
Ronnie van Hout’s giant sculpture stops you in your tracks
Tell us about ‘Boy Walking’. Who is he and where is he going?
I try not to refer to Boy Walking in gendered terms, so I refer to the sculpture as an ‘it’, and think of it simply as a child. So, it’s a child that’s walking. Rather than just asking where the figure is going, the question could also be: where has it been? Movement is between departure and arrival and implies a present that’s always shifting from the past into the future. Children may relate to the work as in the state they feel themselves in (growing, experiencing). For adults it may evoke the return to eternal childhood, which is static and nostalgic, among other things.
You say inspiration was drawn from your 1995 ‘Mephitis’ series of blackand-white photographic prints, which is held at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Can you expand on this?
With the Mephitis series, there’s the image of a figure walking – a young adult. This figure walks from the exterior New Zealand landscape into an inhabited interior, with art on the walls. For me, this series was about the narrative of art history, and our relationship with landscape and abstraction within a background of personal, physical relationships. With this work, I was playing with the archetypes of narrative, modernism and gender. The walking figure fascinated me – in reality, a small lump of plastic that, in context, strode through the world, head up, unaffected and self-contained. Where it comes from or where it’s going are not important, only the constant rhythm of the walk is significant. This image of continuous movement, of the eternal present, the stasis of memory and thresholds are ideas that appear throughout my work. As I get older, I think I understand them better.
Tell us about the 5.6-metre scale and how it came about.
Scale operates in different ways. For example, we have John Radford’s tiny house (‘The Sound of Rain’, a miniature bronze villa) very near ‘Boy Walking’ in Potters Park. Or I think of Alice in Alice in Wonderland, growing large and then small. Being both large and small relate to memory and feelings we can have around childhood. When we grow, our relative scale to things is always changing, and our emotional relation to objects and others can be felt in our bodies as states of being big and small. Scale can also have a practical aspect of making something stand out, of being seen, and of the spectacular. In this case, making a child a giant can give children a sense of power and control in the world – making childhood larger than life; when you are a kid that’s how it can feel.
I like how the sculpture changes scale from different views, how it makes the trees look small, and how it can appear like a toy and monstrous at the same time.
How does ‘Boy Walking’ relate to the site?
I didn’t choose the site, and was fairly unaware of the context during the making phases. The process of producing public art is about collaboration, and the artist doesn’t determine everything. I understand the context of a children’s playground, and it’s very much a park for parents to play with their children. I think the sculpture relates to the park as being a signifier for children, that this is a space for them. At the same time, I feel it visually evokes childhood, and the memory of being a child, that we can all relate to.
Tell us about the 18-month construction process, which took place in New Zealand and Brisbane, and the structure.
The process for making work like this appears simple, but involves so many steps and processes. From the initial idea, I had a child 3D-scanned in the pose of the walking Mephitis figure. This was difficult in itself, as the child had to keep still for minutes in a striding pose. A 3D digital version of the scan is made and drives a CNC machine to cut out a full-size replica in polystyrene. This process and all fabrication was undertaken by UAP (Urban Arts Projects) in Brisbane. The replica is made in parts, like a 3D jigsaw puzzle, with accommodation for a steel armature that supports the completed sculpture.
Each of these CNC-ed polystyrene parts is moulded and cast in aluminium, then welded together over the steel support armature. Welding aluminium, filling holes and faults of the casting process is very tricky, especially as we were aiming for a smooth, seamless finish. The raised aluminium welds are ground down and the entire figure is polished smooth. A special cradle was made to enable the sculpture to be worked on its side, and turned to enable access to all sides. It looked a bit like a rotisserie chicken. The work was then painted and sealed, which sounds simple, but each colour required masking of all the unpainted parts – the stripes on the shirt were challenging. The work was then crated and shipped to New Zealand where a foundation had been dug in Potters Park to receive the sculpture.
A team of expert riggers and carpenters worked to truck the sculpture to the park, lift it and slowly put it in place, like a shuttle docking at the international space station. Would the drawings and foundations in Auckland match the Brisbane-drilled support holes in the sculpture’s feet? There was no room for error. The two connected perfectly. An incredible level of expertise, skill and artistry went into making ‘Boy Walking’. Each step needed care and dedication, and that’s exactly what it received.
Have there been any notable responses to ‘Boy Walking’?
The response from the public has been overwhelmingly positive. A common response is that children run excitedly to the sculpture, grab its leg and give it a big hug, then sit on its giant sneakered feet.