The Celtic Cross (Queens Gardens): 2001

Artist: Stephen Mulqueen

Indian granite

Queens Gardens Dunedin

Photo Rob Linkhorn

 (OST Pubications sculpture trail #18)

InSite

Celtic Cross…………… Queen’s Gardens.

In sixth century Scotland the transition from paganism to Christianity was marked by a series of fascinating standing stones which bore, on one side, Pictish runes and, on the other, the hybrid form we have come to know as the Celtic Cross, a design that was probably brought from Ireland. The six metre high cross which was unveiled in Queen’s Gardens in April 2001 derives from these early beginnings. On the base an inscription reveals that the Cross was given to the City by the Christian Churches of Dunedin to commemorate the birth of the Christian faith 2000 years previously. On the opposite face, the same message is repeated in Maori, making this also a monument to the ideals of bi-culturalism.

The Celtic Cross was produced by the local monumental masons Bingham and Company. It was originally proposed by the Otago Peninsula Ministers Association and accepted as a millennium project by the Christian Millennium Committee. All known Christian churches in Dunedin were invited to join in with the project. Originally it was intended that the cross would be unveiled at Easter 2000 but this plan was thwarted by the resource consent process and it was to be a further twelve months before it was officially received by the City.

The first Christian settlers and their journey to New Zealand are celebrated in the relief designs around the base. A three-masted ship commemorates the voyages of migration and each of the British kingdoms is symbolised by their national plant: a rose for England, a daffodil for Wales, a shamrock for Ireland, and, of course, a thistle for Scotland. On the north side of the base, a settler is met by a Kai Tahu man in a cloak who stands by a cabbage tree and offers the new arrival, by way of welcome, a fish. The design is based on an early sketch and was prepared for the monument by the artist Stephen Mulqueen.

The fish motif is repeated on the shaft of the cross and commemorates the gifts of Maori to people who came in ships. The fish is also an ancient Christian symbol. The twelve human figures on the cross symbolise the twelve apostles, the first Christians, while the circle is a symbol of eternal life and the spiral pattern signifies the resurrection. The modern technique of sandblasting was used to incise these designs.

Even before it was unveiled, the cross came in for spirited criticism. Some objections were lodged concerning the proposed site but both the Otago Settler’s Museum and the Historic Places Trust were in favour of the monument which they felt would add prestige to the historic precinct of Queen’s Gardens. One correspondent to the Otago Daily Times wondered why there was no Gaelic inscription while another claimed it was a memorial to the Celtic nostalgia cult of those who erected it. Some opponents had worried that the Christian symbol so prominently displayed might offend those of other faiths but the Gaelic language ginger group, Clan Albainn, in an ambiguous defence of the monument, claimed that the ringed cross may predate even Christianity and should therefore offend no one.

Richard Dingwall InSite

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

(Sculpture Trail #47a)

In Site

Southern Man …… Dunedin International Airport ……Sam Mahon, sculptor.

In his book “The Year of the Horse” the artist Sam Mahon describes the physical and artistic struggles involved in realising this massive bronze statue which is certainly the largest equestrian monument in New Zealand and possibly the largest single cast bronze statue ever made in this country.

The work was commissioned by Speight’s Brewery as a millennium gift to the Otago region. It shows a high country musterer on horseback. It is an impressive work, rich in surface texture, which brings remarkable dignity to what, at bottom, is an ad man’s fantasy. Hat down over his eyes, his horse steady beneath him, the reins held with one hand, the musterer is slightly twisted to his left, looking behind him. He is, it seems, immersed in his work and at ease with himself and his place in the world.

Mahon’s account of the practical problems of bringing this huge project to fruition are enthralling. The first of these difficulties arose when he showed an early wax model based on measurements of a real horse to an equestrian friend who complained that a horse standing in the pose he had modelled would be diagnosed as suffering from bladder infection.

After this design was modified, and approved by Speight’s, the next stage was to make a full-size model. This was built on an armature of steel and covered with cloth, chicken wire, and about a tonne of plaster. The rough outline was finished in a couple of weeks and then carved. The idea was that the horse and man should seem inextricably linked without too much distracting detail. When the client saw the finished model the one change they required was that the saddle bags should be more clearly carved. This was where the company logo was to be displayed.

From this finished model moulds were made. And it was from these that the horse and rider were cast. The final sculpture weighs about 1200 kilos, with the tail alone weighing about seventy kilos. It was made in about fifty different sections and then welded together. This sound very simple. However, Mahon and his collaborators were constantly required to adapt their techniques and build specialised equipment to solve the many technical problems they encountered. For example, a machine for turning bricks into dust for the moulds was driven by the drive wheels of the family Morris car.

The invention and ingenuity shown by Mahon remind us of the heroic struggles of his great predecessors in bronze sculpture. In fact, on one occasion he turned to the workshop manual of the great baroque sculptor Benvenuto Cellini for a recipe for the inside of the mould-making kiln which had burnt out. The ingredients were sand, clay and fresh cow manure, mixed together by treading them with bare feet. Mahon and his partner, Alison, tossed a coin and he lost. She went to make a cup of tea while Sam took off his boots and got treading. Cellini also provided a recipe for giving a final patina to the bronze. This required the urine of young boys but was not adopted by the modern sculptor who preferred copper nitrate to provide the surface finish.

The statue was unveiled in September 2000, having taken a little over a year to complete.

Richard Dingwall.

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

Soldiers Memorial (Otago Peninsula): 1923

R. A. Hosie, Architect E. H. Walden

Bluestone Plinth, Cement? Statue

Highcliff Road, Otago Peninsula

(Sculpture Trail #40)

Otago Peninsula Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial………. Highcliff

E.H. Walden, Architect/ R.A. Hosie, artist.

Many small communities were determined to erect their own memorials of the 1914 – 18 War. The Otago Peninsula Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial, for example, has forty-nine names of the men from the region who died overseas.

Unveiled on Sunday 18 March 1923 the 10 metre high monument of squared bluestone is surmounted by the figure of a solitary soldier. Unlike Dunedin’s Boer War Memorial of 1906 where the infantryman is seen as an idealised figure, this is intimate portrayal of the ordinary soldier. He stands with his coat half open, his rifle slung over his left shoulder.

He is on perpetual sentry duty in a foreign field. However, his thoughts, it seems, are at home on the Otago Peninsula.

There is a 500 metre climb from the road to the memorial and this makes visits awkward. However, it is visible from most of the Peninsula and, on a clear day, it can even be seen from St Andrews Street in the heart of the city. In fact, it might be argued that its principal function is to be seen from a distance since, when the viewer stands in front of the granite stone where the names of the forty nine are inscribed, it is impossible to get a clear view of the carved figure. Instead the visitor naturally turns and looks out over the astonishing vista of the harbour and the city in the distance.

The architect, Edward Walden, designed many commercial and public buildings around Dunedin, the best known being the Carnegie Public Library. The artist, Robert Hosie, advertised himself as a sculptor from 1916 to 1924 and then disappeared from the Dunedin art scene. There is also a memorial board with plaster angels by Hosie in the collection of the Otago Settler’s Museum.

A family who still farm the neighbouring land donated the rock on which the memorial stands. It was first known as Big Stone, then as Arthurs Seat, after the hill in Holyrood Park near Edinburgh.

Richard Dingwall

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

Rongo ( Portsmouth Drive): 1987

Conceived by Tom Ngatai and Sonny Waru

Taranaki stone and concrete

Corner Portsmouth Drive and Portobello Rd, Dunedin

Photo, Bill Nichol

(OST Pubications sculpture trail #43)

Insite

Rongo (Taranaki Memorial)…. Portsmouth Drive

This simple memorial, a rock brought from Taranaki and raised on a plinth with commemorative plaques, was erected in memory of the Maori prisoners from the nineteenth century wars in Taranaki who died in Otago during their term of imprisonment.

The memorial was proposed after a visit to Otago by Taranaki Maori, among them descendants of the original prisoners, on the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners. The invitation had come from Ricki Ellison whose family had historical connections with Taranaki. His ancestor Raniera Erihana had come from Taranaki to Otago in search of gold in 1862.

After that visit, one Taranaki elder decided that it was important that the dead should have proper commemoration. With support of his local elders, Tom Ngatai conceived a memorial whose simplicity would reflect the humility and peace-loving philosophy of the Taranaki prisoners, many of whom were followers of the prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi who set up the community of Parihaka on the slopes of Mount Taranaki.

The story of the finding the stone has the quality of legend. Tom Ngatai and the great North Island tohunga, Sonny Waru, were searching the coast for a stone when the tohunga’s hat flew off in the wind leading the men to a rock that was revealed by the outgoing tide. Its surface was decorated with ancient carving long worn down with the action of the sea. It was clearly the rock they wanted.

The stone was raised from the sea and taken to Hawera where it was inscribed with the single word “Rongo”. Te Whiti and Tohu had called their first settlement Te Maunga a Rongo o te Ikaroa a Maui Tiki Tiki a Taranga which alludes to their hopes for peaceful resolution of conflict. Rongo is the god of peace and cultivation. This choice of name for the rock seems significant in the way it seems to allude to the aspirations of the Parihaka movement whose members followed the biblical injunction to turn spears into ploughshares. As part of a campaign of passive resistance to land confiscations, they uprooted surveyors’ pegs across their land by ploughing through them. This was agriculture as civil disobedience.

The memorial was unveiled on March 22, 1987 by the Governor General Sir Paul Reeves who was himself a descendant of the Taranaki detainees. There were about eighty people from Taranaki and two hundred from Dunedin present during the two-hour ceremony. Two Maori clergymen blessed the monument, one with water from a sacred stream in Taranaki and the other with water from the slopes of Aoraki-Mount Cook.

Between 1869 and 1881 around two hundred men were sent from Taranaki for imprisonment in Dunedin. The first 74 arrived in November 1869 and were held until March 1872. The second group of prisoners were Te Whiti’s ploughmen who arrived between August 1879 and January 1880. The prisoners were put to work on the city’s infrastructure including the Andersons Bay Causeway which is within sight of the Rongo monument. During their incarceration the Taranaki men were visited by Maori from Otakau who provided them with companionship, warm clothing and food.

The prisoners found the Dunedin weather very cold and eighteen are believed to have died. The most common cause of death was given as tuberculosis. These men were buried in the city’s cemeteries but when these were reshaped the location of the graves was lost. Therefore, many of the detainees have no known place of burial, and no memorial except Rongo.

Richard Dingwall

April 18, 2009

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

Robbie Burns (The Octagon): 1886

Sir John Steell

Bronze, marble

Photo Rob Linkhorn

(OST Pubications sculpture trail #11)

InSite

Robert Burns Statue Octagon Sir John Steell, sculptor.

The statue of Robert Burns which stares out over the Octagon is the work of the pre-eminent Scottish sculptor of the nineteenth century, Sir John Steell. It is a testament to the late nineteenth century cult of Burns who was hailed as the poet of the Common Man, the Ploughboy Poet. It is also a reminder of the city’s Scottish antecedents – Dunedin being the Gaelic name for the Scottish capital Edinburgh. There were other connections too. The first minister of First Church, Thomas Burns, was the poet’s nephew and it was the poet’s great grand niece Agnes Burns who officially unveiled the statue before an enthusiastic crowd of 8000 in May 1887.

Steell was concerned that his portrayal should be accurate. He studied the celebrated portrait of the poet by the artist Alexander Naysmith and even borrowed a cast of Burn’s skull from the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. The original of Steell’s design can be seen in Central Park, New York, where it was unveiled to much favourable comment. Copies followed in Dundee and London. In fact the Dunedin version, like the London one, has had subtle changes made from the two earlier models. The head looks less sharply upwards and there are small adjustments to the arms and legs. It was cast in bronze at Steell’s foundry in Edinburgh and shipped to Dunedin in late 1886.

The sculpture was paid for by public subscription. The fact that it was a copy rather than an original design reduced the cost of the project. However, times were hard in the 1880s and at the time of the unveiling there was still £250 outstanding which was only settled the next year. It may be that there was some reluctance to subscribe to a memorial for a hard-drinking womaniser whose posthumous collection of bawdy verse “The Merry Muses of Caledonia” was out of step with Victorian morality. (Interestingly it is for those very verses that Burns is celebrated in Germany where there is apparently a tradition of earthly folk poetry.)

The City Council voted that the statue be sited on the reserve near the Railway Station but those members of the public who had subscribed raised objection and, after a poll of subscribers (one vote for every five shilling donated), the council changed its mind and the statue was erected on the site originally planned for it at the West of the Octagon where it now stands.

And what is the poet looking at? For a while it seemed he was staring balefully across the Octagon to the sixty-eight foot high Gothic revival column dedicated to the memory of his nephew Thomas which was erected amid some controversy in 1892 and dismantled by the city council in 1948. In fact, Burns is in the throes of poetic composition. He is sitting on an elm branch, symbolic of Scotland, and he is writing “Thou Lingering Star” an elegy to his lost love Highland Mary. Fortunately, during the recent conservation by Francois Leurquin the Bard has had the quill returned to his right hand (it had been missing for forty odd years) and he can now inscribe his timeless verses onto the scroll at his feet.

Richard Dingwall

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

Queen Victoria (Queens Gardens): 1905

Artist: Herbert Hampton

Marble, bronze.

(OST Pubications sculpture trail #16)

InSite                                                                     

Queen Victoria Memorial……..Queens Gardens……Herbert Hampton, sculptor.

Queen Victoria’s nose has been more the subject of recent attention than the merits of the statue as a memorial to the Queen who died, on 22 January 1901, after a reign which lasted almost 64 years. In 1995 the statue was splashed with paint and the nose of the former monarch was broken off. Her face was chipped and two fingers of her right hand were removed and her sceptre and orb damaged. Then in February 2000 the two bronze figures which sit either side of Her Majesty had a corrosive liquid thrown over them, causing extensive damage. Full conservation of the memorial was only completed later that year.

Some of these attacks seem to have been crude political protests. Perhaps this is not surprising since the statue always had a political function as well as serving as a memorial for the late Queen. A statue was a way of boosting the Province of Otago over its rivals in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland who had all recently commissioned statues of the late monarch. Moreover, mourning for Victoria was deeply linked with ideas of Empire. On February 8^th 1901 an Otago Daily Times leader called for a memorial statue: “There is hardly a man woman or child in the province that would not contribute something.” it proclaimed. This editorial came the day after the newspaper had reported the departure, cheered on by large crowds, of Imperial troops who had swept through Dunedin on a recruiting drive on their way to the Boer War. More sombrely, the unveiling of Victoria statues around the country three or four years later was often associated with commemorations for the dead of this colonial adventure, although Dunedin does have its own memorial in the Oval. In later years, members of the Naval League were photographed around the Queen during the annual celebrations of Trafalgar Day. And in early September 1997 the statue was again on the front page when it became the repository of floral tributes to Diana, Princess of Wales who had died, days earlier, in Paris in a car crash.

Dunedin was the last of the major centres to commission a statue of Queen Victoria. Like Wellington it decided to do so only after the Queen had died. The Dunedin statue, unlike its rivals around the country, is carved in marble. It was unveiled on March 25th 1905. The sculptor was Herbert Hampton, a respected if not widely celebrated British sculptor. The late Queen is shown standing, crowned and with orb and sceptre, symbols of Imperial power, in her hands. She is raised on a plinth which is flanked by two mourning figures. Both are in bronze. The figure to the left personifies Justice, and holds a sword. The figure to the right, Wisdom, is holding a scroll. On the plinth two putti, little naked angels, support a shield which commemorates Victoria R et I: Queen and Empress. It is an elegant and dignified memorial although the town scape around her has changed to such an extent since her unveiling that she now seems marooned on a giant traffic island, a slightly comic figure from a bygone era.

Richard Dingwall.

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

 Photo, Mike O’kane

 (OST Pubications sculpture trail #28a and #28b)

InSite

Peter Pan…………… Cecil Thomas, Sculptor

Since 1904 when J.M Barrie’s play was first staged. Peter Pan has been a symbol for the enchantment of childhood. One who fell under the spell of “the boy who wouldn’t grow up” was Harold Richmond, a Green Island businessman and philanthropist. When he was growing up in Oamaru he loved the statue in the Oamaru Public Gardens which depicts two children standing on a tree stump and looking down at the fairies, elves, birds, squirrels, and other small animals sculpted on the base. He remembered the magic of the imagery and the delight he had experienced as, like the children it depicted, he clambered over the statue and looked down at the enchanted world below.

It was this sense of wonder and also the physical pleasure of clambering over a statue that he wanted to pass on to future generations of children. He originally envisaged a smaller statue than the 2 metre high Peter Pan that is now sited in the Botanical gardens but when he was shown the site he decided that a larger work was best.

This was to be the first statue in the Botanical Gardens. The sculptor chosen for the work was a London based artist, Cecil Thomas. Thomas was a respected sculptor with some significant commissions to his name. His two metre high statue showing Peter with Tinkerbell at his shoulder standing on the sawn trunk of a tree is an original design although it obviously owes something to the most famous of all Peter Pan statues sculpted by Sir George Frampton which was commissioned by Barrie himself and is in London’s Kensington Gardens. Cecil Thomas’ Peter is, however more spirited, less obviously simply a boy. The Oamaru sculpture was designed by Thomas Clapperton, a pupil of Frampton’s.

Present at the unveiling in 1965 was twelve year-old Christopher Johnstone who was the model for Peter. However, the show was stolen by a toddler, Hillary Muir, who demonstrated how well the statue was conceived by climbing all over it even as the dignitaries were speaking. Harold Richmond took the opportunity to speak fondly of the pleasures of patronage and urged others to follow his example rather than holding on to their money. In fact, he went further and commissioned a companion statue from Cecil Thomas of Wendy and her brother flying to Never‑Never land, with Nana, their dog, at their feet. It was unveiled in 1968. A Peter Pan by Cecil Thomas based on his Dunedin design was unveiled in Wanganui in 1967

Richard Dingwall

Text Copyright © Richard Dingwall

Insite

Learning to Fly…….. Dunedin Botanical Gardens…….. Cecil Thomas, Sculptor…..

Green Island businessman Harold Richmond was delighted by the success of the Peter Pan sculpture in the Botanical Gardens. This he donated to the city in July 1966 and quickly commissioned a second piece on the same theme from the same sculptor, the Welsh born sculptor Cecil Thomas.

Cecil Thomas thought of the idea for the Wendy sculpture while he was making a bus trip round the South Island, probably at the time of the unveiling of the Peter Pan sculpture. The sculpture is eight feet high and weighs half a ton. It shows Wendy and her two brothers John and Michael, the three Darling children from the J.M Barrie’s play, flying away, watched by their faithful Newfoundland dog, Nana.

Harold Richmond grew up in Oamaru and had fond memories of Sir Thomas Clapperton’s Wonderland sculpture in the gardens where two children, a boy and a girl, look down from the top of a sawn-off tree trunk into a magical world below where fairies mingle with rabbits, owls and other woodland creatures. Some of that same sense of wonder is maintained in the Wendy sculpture where delicate fairies are seen around the trunk of the tree which the three children fly past. It was Harold Richmond’s hope that this would be a statue which children could touch and scramble over, entering into some of the mystery and delight of Never-Never Land. The success of the Wendy sculpture can be judged by the golden glow of Nana the dog’s nose where generations of children have clambered up, aspiring to fly with the three Darling children.

Harold Richmond was a shy man who preferred to stay out of the public eye. Over the years he made a number of bequests to the city, often for the betterment of the lives of children. He had originally wanted to make his Peter Pan donation anonymously but was present at the unveiling. On this sculpture he has been prevailed upon to accept some public recognition of his generosity. This takes the form of a medal held aloft by one of the circling fairies. Around his profile of him in low relief are the words “Harold Richmond Benefactor”. It may be too that Cecil Thomas wanted to pay homage to the patron who had brought him major commissions late in his career. In 1967 he had unveiled another statue of Peter Pan, close in design to the Dunedin one, near Virginia Lake in Wanganui.

Richard Dingwall

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall

Otago Centennial Memorial (Signal Hill): 1952-55

Artists: Francis Shurrock and Fred Staub

Bronze Figures

Photo, Bill Nichol

(OST Pubications Sculpture Trail #27)

InSite

Otago Centennial Memorial…….Signal Hill…….Francis Shurrock, Sculptor

The figures sit, Buddha-like, in windswept isolation on Signal Hill. Vulnerable to the attacks of vandals, they gaze, on our behalf, over one of the finest views of Dunedin City from any of its surrounding hills. Or they would had the artist Francis Shurrocks’s symbolic programme not required that History gaze due West, his eyes forever fixed on Swampy Summit while his female companion stares in the opposite direction, to the radio masts on the Otago Peninsula.

The sculptures were installed in 1955 and the commission completed in June 1957 when stone plaques by Shurrock were added to the cenotaph. These show the New Zealand fern, the Scottish thistle and the Otago Provincial seal.

Francis Shurrock was 63 years old and several years in retirement from his teaching position at the Canterbury College School of Art when in 1950 he undertook the commission to produce these two mammoth figures on the Signal Hill monument that celebrates the Centennial of the Province of Otago. The two seated figures, one male and female, represent Otago’s past and its future. The male figure was named “The First One Hundred Years” but became known as “Old Father History” and finally, simply “History”. He gazes West, towards the setting sun and clasps in his hand a closed book with the dates of the century past on its spine : 1848 – 1948. His features are a homage to Shurrock’s hero the great Italian Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo whose sculpture of Moses dominates the tomb in Rome of the warrior Pope, Julius. II. The female figure looks East, to the future, and holds in her lap the thread of life. Her features are modelled on those of the artist’s wife, Elizabeth.

The construction of the figures was a complex business. After the models were approved by the Centennial Committee, Shurrock then scaled them up to half size, then repeated the process to produce full size plaster models which were sent to England to be cast in bronze. This was hard physical labour for a man in his sixties and he recruited an assistant, Fred Staub, to help him. Both men’s names are on the finished work.

Richard Dingwall

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall