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Heritage sculptures are being unveiled at the three Massey University campuses to commemorate the 50th anniversary of becoming a university.
The first to be unveiled, at Albany yesterday, was a giant chicken wing called The Golden Promise created by Reuben Paterson. An established Auckland artist renowned for his work using glitter, Mr Paterson used the metaphor of a wing symbolising protection and nurturing offered by the university to students at the campus, which was previously the site of chicken farming.
The combinations of animal welfare, of nostalgia, and of a broken promise reveal ways of looking twice upon our landscapes and the stories contained within them as they explain the diverse relationships between land and fauna, of the actual nature of fauna verses the categories we impose on them and how these purposes come to suit. What has always inspired and intrigued me are these ways of seeing, and of not being able to see, of knowing, and of yet to learn, and of being able to discover multiple layers (as layered readings) of visual truths - those truths that are obvious, and those that are hidden.
The well known idiom ‘Under it’s Wings’ has the etymology of the bird protecting it’s babies and beautifully describes in regard to tutelage, a place where students are nurtured by school or tutor, because the school receives students into their care, so they are helped and protected.
In the sculptures upright position, the community of Massey University, when traversing toward it from the Southern entrance, walk directly into the idiom of embrace and nurture. When encountered from the North, the shape of the wing creates a gateway framed by wing tip and wingette in the shape of a capital A, grading this art work, academically - a new type of cloister through which to enter into the embrace and issue forth into the university in a veil of protection.
“This work especially refers to – and celebrates – the development of the university from its beginnings as an agricultural college, into what it has aspired to become over the course of its own history – and just as the university has transformed and grown over this time, so too has the pastoral land on which it is located at Albany,” he says.
Professor Kerry Chamberlain, who chairs the visual arts committee at Albany, says the sculpture fitted the brief for the work to be not merely decorative, but an artistic statement linking place and history and the University’s aspirations. He acknowledged the work, located inside the Quadrangle, may be controversial, but says a function of art is to intrigue and challenge.
“Reuben wanted to engage students and make people laugh and smile while simultaneously recognising the work as a serious and symbolic sculpture.”
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Heritage sculptures are being unveiled at the three Massey University campuses to commemorate the 50th anniversary of becoming a university.
The first to be unveiled, at Albany yesterday, was a giant chicken wing called The Golden Promise created by Reuben Paterson. An established Auckland artist renowned for his work using glitter, Mr Paterson used the metaphor of a wing symbolising protection and nurturing offered by the university to students at the campus, which was previously the site of chicken farming.
The combinations of animal welfare, of nostalgia, and of a broken promise reveal ways of looking twice upon our landscapes and the stories contained within them as they explain the diverse relationships between land and fauna, of the actual nature of fauna verses the categories we impose on them and how these purposes come to suit. What has always inspired and intrigued me are these ways of seeing, and of not being able to see, of knowing, and of yet to learn, and of being able to discover multiple layers (as layered readings) of visual truths - those truths that are obvious, and those that are hidden.
The well known idiom ‘Under it’s Wings’ has the etymology of the bird protecting it’s babies and beautifully describes in regard to tutelage, a place where students are nurtured by school or tutor, because the school receives students into their care, so they are helped and protected.
In the sculptures upright position, the community of Massey University, when traversing toward it from the Southern entrance, walk directly into the idiom of embrace and nurture. When encountered from the North, the shape of the wing creates a gateway framed by wing tip and wingette in the shape of a capital A, grading this art work, academically - a new type of cloister through which to enter into the embrace and issue forth into the university in a veil of protection.
“This work especially refers to – and celebrates – the development of the university from its beginnings as an agricultural college, into what it has aspired to become over the course of its own history – and just as the university has transformed and grown over this time, so too has the pastoral land on which it is located at Albany,” he says.
Professor Kerry Chamberlain, who chairs the visual arts committee at Albany, says the sculpture fitted the brief for the work to be not merely decorative, but an artistic statement linking place and history and the University’s aspirations. He acknowledged the work, located inside the Quadrangle, may be controversial, but says a function of art is to intrigue and challenge.
“Reuben wanted to engage students and make people laugh and smile while simultaneously recognising the work as a serious and symbolic sculpture.”