Explosion of colour as sculptor aims to raise a smile
New Zealand artist Judy Millar is bringing an explosion of colour to central Christchurch.
Her colourful, nine-metre tall sculpture is being built on Armagh St at the top of New Regent St for the Scape Public Art festival that starts on October 3.
Millar, who has represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale, said she wanted to bring energy to a sometimes ‘‘bleak’’ city centre.
‘‘This is about energy rising up,’’ she said.
‘‘It is a bit like an explosion . . . I was interested in the city coming alive again and re-energising. I wanted to create a new kind of energy.’’
‘‘I want to excite people’s emotions and inspire them. Energise and inspire and offer some hope, make people laugh. That would be great. Make people smile even, that would be fine.’’
The sculpture is made of five intersecting flat planes of wood on a steel frame. The panels will be clad in printed photographs of brushstrokes created by Millar and magnified by 10. It is Millar’s first public artwork and will be on the city centre site for two years. The project was funded by private donors and a small amount of seed funding from arts agency Creative New Zealand.
Millar hopes the new sculpture, which was inspired by a pop-up book of Millar’s work published last year, will be a new wayfinder for Christchurch people.
The sculpture is named Call Me Snake after a famous line from 1980s science fiction film Escape from New York.
‘‘I really like it when public buildings get these names. Like the Gherkin in London. I was trying to come up with a name for it that might have that simple gherkin thing.
‘‘That is something that happens when an object enters the psyche of a group, they name it.’’
‘‘This is me chucking that name out there, call me snake. Who knows, it might just be called that stupid object down the road.’’
Millar said she was fascinated by the power of public art in postquake Christchurch.
‘‘It’s terrifically exciting to do something in this landscape. The landscape is reforming and to be part of that is great. I wouldn’t be so keen to do public art anywhere else. Public art is often just decoration for an existing landscape, but here it is far more fundamental.’’