Hutt City Enriched with Public Art

Sport meets art as E Tu Awakairangi Hutt Public Art Trust marks its official launch with its first commissioned public artwork: a major new interactive sculpture by acclaimed kinetic sculptor Aiko Groot.

Olympic broadcaster Keith Quinn will open the work, titled CUBE4, with Hutt City Mayor David Ogden in a launch ceremony which celebrates the work’s sporting connections, as well as the new Trust.

E Tu was established last year with the mission: “Enriching Hutt City with public art so our community stands tall with spirit and pride.”

The towering CUBE4 sculpture stands nearly eight metres tall and is located outside the new Pelorus Trust Sportshouse at Hutt Park. Its site makes it very accessible to park users as well as highly visible to commuters on the busy Seaview roundabout.

Its four aluminium cubes can be separately moved by activating the crank handles in the concrete plinth, dramatically changing its form. It will respond differently to an individual turning just one handle than to a ‘team’ of four people working all four handles.

The minimalist aesthetic of the sculpture belies the complex engineering inside. Groot has modified the hydraulic pump and gearbox technology usually found in tractors or similar machinery to enable the vertically-stacked cubes to tilt in precarious angles.

Many kinetic (moving) sculptures rely on the action of computers, water, wind or sun to move so this large-scale, human-driven one is very special, according to artist Aiko Groot.

“I’ve been hanging out to make a big work that needed direct physical interaction, and the Pelorus Trust Sportshouse context is perfect because sport and motion are synonymous. You could work up a sweat with it if you wanted.”

He hopes CUBE4 will motivate play and interaction both with the work and between other people. “My aim is that this becomes a living part of a human space; a piece owned by the community because it is entirely responsive to that community.”

E Tu Trustee Allan Brown says, “E Tu is thrilled to present its first commissioned public artwork because the positive impact of art on the human sprit is quite remarkable, and we want to provide more and more opportunities for an even wider audience to have this uplifting experience.”

“We are carefully and consciously creating works of public art that fit harmoniously with their sites to create connections between them and different sectors of the community. For instance, The Smiling Windmills sculpture by Leon van den Eijkel near the playground at Avalon Park attracts children as well as adults, while Aiko Groot’s CUBE4 makes a real link with sportspeople.”

CUBE4 is presented by E Tu Awakairangi Hutt Public Art Trust with the support of Pelorus Trust and Hutt City Council.

Pelorus Trust Manager Alister Skene says, “We were aware with the construction of the Pelorus Trust Sportshouse on Crown Reserve that it was our responsibility to create a good relationship between the building and Hutt Park.”

“Where CUBE4 is sited we wanted to create a public access space where people could move enjoyably between the building and the sports grounds beyond, exercise, walk their dog and use the outdoor seating, but which also tied back to the function of the Sportshouse, the headquarters of so many important New Zealand sporting organisations. The new sculpture invites people to interact with it and is inspirational to tenants, visitors and passersby alike,” he says.

“Helping to introduce the concept of public art into the Hutt Valley is very exciting for the Pelorus Trust as it enriches the environment so much.”

The Pelorus Trust Sportshouse is a purpose-built sports administration and training facility which houses national, regional and local sports organisations such as Hutt City Council’s Leisure Active, BikeNZ, Swimming NZ, Softball NZ, Wellington Rugby League, Sport Wellington Region, and more.

Hutt Park has been designated a recreational area since the 1850s; a situation that is thought to be unique in New Zealand history. Since then it has been used for horse and greyhound racing, trotting, athletics, golf, hot air ballooning (1894), light aircraft flights (1920), as well as soccer and indoor cricket. It also houses the long-established Hutt Park Motor Camp and was the base for large numbers of American marines in WWII. 

E Tu’s next public art project is a series of light boxes displaying the art of local WELTEC students, in a collaboration between E Tu, WELTEC and Hutt City Council. Backlit panels on new High Street light pillars will display graphic art by the design students, with the content to be changed over regularly.

“This is an engagement of young artists with a piece of public space which will give their work exposure as well as create a sense of ownership and pride,” Allan Brown says.

Other planned E Tu projects include a public artwork in Eastbourne and a water-based work in the central business area of Hutt City as well as another fire sculpture event at next year’s Petone Winter Carnival.

E Tu Trust will be relying on public donations, community funding and corporate sponsorship for future public art.

ARTIST’S COMMENTS:

Kinetic sculptor Aiko Groot says:
“I design and build almost exclusively kinetic (moving) sculptures that encourage a multitude of interpretations. These works are in many ways a reflection of my own ambiguous relationship with technology. I find gizmos of any sort extraordinarily interesting yet I am deeply aware of their often superfluous and de-humanising nature. There is of course an unmistakable irony in exploring this love/hate relationship with machines by making more of them. This has led me to pursue a re-humanisation of the technical/mechanical; a search for the personality in the machine.”

“The permutations range from graceful to precarious, behaviour that belies its rigid and minimal aesthetic. Behaviour that is entirely at the whim of the observer, becasue it is the observer that powers this piece by direct interaction.”

“Each handle affects one cube only. To achieve the full range of motion requires a collective effort, friends or strangers working together, perhaps interspersed with moments to catch breath and discuss the results achieved.”

“Modernism is not immune to someone kicking a soccer ball against the walls - even a tilt slab factory comes to life thanks to the people who spend their days there.”