Sculpture to return to city centre
An artwork that became a ‘‘symbol of hope’’ after the earthquakes will have been missing from the streets of Christchurch for nearly a year by the time it returns.
Artist Phil Price said his
kinetic sculpture on the corner of Lichfield, High and Manchester streets was taken down for maintenance in June last year.
It is being serviced and a new, higher plinth will be built for the artwork so it does not interfere with new tram wires being erected on High St. Price says he will have completed work on the sculpture by August.
The sculpture is the only structure at the junction that survived the February 2011 earthquake and the following wave of demolition.
Price said he was looking forward to the sculpture returning to the streets.
‘‘People keep saying that it is the thing that really became a symbol of hope after the earthquake,’’ he said.
‘‘In that area of town it is one of very few things that are still there. It was part of the fabric of the city we once had.
‘‘It became a symbol of strength because it is still there. It will be nice to have that symbol back again.’’
Christchurch City Council head of parks Brent Smith said the artwork was being overhauled.
‘‘Just before the earthquakes we were about to install a plinth to raise the artwork above the tram overhead lines that were to be installed,’’ he said.
‘‘This project is now under way and we are taking the opportunity to carry out additional works to rebalance the top portion of the work and overhaul the bearings.’’
Price said the sculpture was getting a full service before its return.
‘‘It is all coming apart and getting a check over,’’ he said.
‘‘A lot of these sculptures need a bit of a look over and a bit of a rejig and in some cases a rethink here and there.
‘‘They can last a very long time, but like a car or an aeroplane, they need servicing.’’
The sculpture was installed on High St in 2006. The council provided $40,000 of the $110,000 cost.
The nine-metre high kinetic sculpture features red petal shapes that move in the wind.
The High St junction was badly hit in the earthquakes with the ANZ Chambers building and the Reuben Blades building both collapsing.
The nearby Stranges building also partially collapsed and has since been replaced with a modern building.
The other sites on the junction remain empty.
Toipahautea waitaki is estimated to have lived about 27.5 million years ago, but a fossil of the whale was recovered from a working quarry in the Hakataramea Valley of South Canterbury in 1988.
However, it was only worked on recently. Now, New Zealand and Taiwanese researchers have identified the fossil as a new genus and species of whale.
When the fossil was uncovered, researchers found a range of separated but associated bones including a partial skull, the lower jaw, vertebrae, two scapulae, a partial humerus and ribs.
From the existing fossil bones the estimated skull length was 1.5 to 1.6 metres long and the body was estimated to be about 5m long. By whale standards, that was on the small side.
Examination of the fossil suggested the specimen was a physically immature individual, either juvenile or sub-adult age.
The jaw structure was consistent with baleen-assisted gulpfeeding, researchers said.
Baleen whales are a group of Mysticeti, large whales usually from colder waters that lack teeth but have baleen plates in the upper jaw which are used to filter food such as krill out of large quantities of seawater.
A paper describing the whale said: ‘‘The origin of baleen and microphagous feeding by cetaceans marks a major evolutionary breakthrough, leading ultimately to the emergence of the largest animal, the blue whale.’’
The University of Otago’s Professor Ewan Fordyce said the discovery was significant in New Zealand’s fossil history. ‘‘This is a pretty old whale that goes almost half-way back to the age of the dinosaurs. We are tracking whale history back through time.
‘‘This newly-named whale [is] about as old a common ancestor as we have for the living baleen whales like the minke whales and the right whales.’’