New Christchurch sculpture revealed

Flour power: artist Regan Gentry says his sculpture has a point to make about Canterbury.

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Is it a plant form? Is it a techno-tepee? A towering contemporary icon?

Meet Flour Power, Christchurch's newest public sculpture, commissioned by the Christchurch City Council's Public Art Advisory Group, created by Wellington-based artist Regan Gentry and inspired by the changing face of Canterbury.

Gentry's design an elegant, 13m-high sheaf of illuminated metal plant forms was revealed in Christchurch last night.

The sculpture will be installed in the Stewart Plaza on the corner of High and Colombo streets before being officially unveiled during next month's SCAPE 2008 Christchurch Biennale of Art in Public Space.

"Flour Power will give the appearance that a giant has walked through the city, gathering lamp-posts like flowers, collecting them into a bunch, wrapping a tyre around them and placing the whole lot as a centrepiece in the Stewart Plaza," Gentry said.

"Flour Power has a point to make. In Canterbury, fields of crops have given way to fields of houses. Rows of wheat have been replaced by rows of streetlights. Farm tractors have grown smaller and multiplied exponentially, growing sleeker and faster, modified to `pull chicks' instead of ploughs."

The $250,000 work, funded by the city council ($100,000) and the Stewart family ($150,000), is the first public sculpture to be commissioned by the recently reinstated Public Art Advisory Group.

The group comprises representatives of the Christchurch Art Gallery, the council's strategy and planning unit and the Art & Industry Biennial Trust. Other members include an independent curator-art historian, Lara Strongman, and city councillor Claudia Reid.

The group is chaired by Anthony Wright, director of the Canterbury Museum and chairman of the Art & Industry Biennial Trust.

Flour Power will stand on the site of the former Stewart Fountain. It is the seventh permanent artwork involving the trust.

The earlier works are Phil Price's 2006 kinetic sculpture Nucleus, at the corner of High, Manchester and Lichfield streets, Peter Roche's 2004 Circuit, at the Arts Centre clocktower, and Bill Culbert's neon sculpture Blue, at the Christchurch Convention Centre.

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Heather Hapeta   #2   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Yes Celiina, flour power is striking -- but is it appropriate for central chch? check out my blog on the topic

http://heatherhapeta.blogspot.com/

Celiina   #1   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I love the new Flour Power Sculpture. Imaginative, and very striking and with so much more meaning that the Chalice (?sp). An I think it will weather very well too - in fact it will give it more.

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