Takaka artwork costs $113,000
Visitors to Takaka will soon be greeted by a major piece of art that is tipped to cost a little over $100,000.
The final design and indicative costings for artist Ben Timmins’ and designer Mat Nalder’s Mohua bird sculpture have been released to the public and come at an estimated cost of $113,117.
The design was picked last year as a finalist for the Golden Bay Community Arts Council’s Gateway Project and would be sited just after the ‘‘Welcome to Takaka’’ sign.
The final design, which has changed since the first draft, features a large representation of an endangered Mohua bird sitting on a rock with its wings spread about to take flight.
It would be engineered from a welded hexagonal steel nut tessellation and be illuminated from the inside.
At the Golden Bay Community Board meeting on Tuesday, Arts Worker Simon Gray said the history of who would run the project was ‘‘convoluted’’ and he asked the board to find a project manager to take over.
‘‘The Arts Council is in a bit of a change at the moment and it doesn’t have as many members as it needs,’’ he said.
‘‘We need to support [the project] as an Arts Council, and that might be through working with people.
‘‘We have got the project where it is now at this stage ... and now we need to stop our involvement.’’
The Gateway Project has a seedfund of $20,000 from the Tasman District Council to ‘‘enhance’’ Golden Bay.
Seed-funding is a sum of money used to help raise further funds for a chosen project.
Councillor Sue Brown said she appreciated the project’s history about who would run it was ‘‘a bit vague’’, but her understanding was that seed funding is granted out of rates to a group who will run the project themselves.
‘‘So my expectation is that the Arts Council would be the ones that run it, not the community board.’’
Nalder said an Auckland-based company that specialises in street sculpture, signage and movie sets would construct the steel nut tessellation part.
‘‘We want to be doing something that represents our local area in terms of our art, and [has] longevity, using materials that show quality.
‘‘It can challenge people too, and art’s meant to challenge, in terms of the kinds of materials we use that make us question all sorts of things.’’
The board agreed to look into whether it was its responsibility to find a ‘‘champion’’ to manage projects and see this project to its completion.