Transient Being sculpture ends ‘miracle journey’ at Pukenamu
Whanganui artist Hamish Horsley has gifted his Transient Being sculpture to Whanganui.
Horsley, who was brought up in the city, has spent much of his life in England and Asia.
He made the stone sculpture in his South London studio in 1998, for an exhibition in a Dorset sculpture garden.
After that it was in a small South London botanical garden, until New Zealand High Commissioner Paul East asked for it, for the foyer of New Zealand House.
Much more recently Horsley got a phone call, saying the art work had to be moved. He was back in Whanganui and talked to his long-time friend, gallery owner Bill Milbank, “legendary for his outrageous ideas”.
“He said ‘Why don’t we bring it to
Whanganui?’ ” Horsley said.
Many emails later the sculpture was crated and on one of the last Air New Zealand flights out of London before
lockdown. It spent the next months in Milbank’s gallery, and the Leedstown Trust provided Oamaru stone for its base.
It was officially unveiled at Pukenamu
Queen’s Park on Thursday.
It’s something like a miracle for the sculpture to end up on Pukenamu, Horsley said. After a karakia from kauma¯tua John Maihi it was “starting to settle” and he felt delighted and privileged by its new position.
Whanganui councillor Helen Craig said it was important to have Whanganui art work in Pukenamu Queen’s Park, with the Matt Pine cones recently restored to the Whanganui War Memorial Centre an example.
More public art for the central city is being finalised, and she hopes the Pukenamu hilltop will one day get officially recognised as a Tohu Whenua, a place important in New Zealand history.
“To have this beautiful piece here, it’s just fantastic,” she said.
There has been another important art work in the courtyard, Maihi said. It was the pou Te Taurawhiri, carved in the library, unveiled in 1984 and erected in the courtyard. It has been buried on Pukenamu, he said, but could be recovered.