Christine HELLYAR

Spring 2004
Bronze and basalt
1040 x 3507 x 2140 mm
Collection of the Edmiston Trust, Auckland Domain

Part of the project initiated by Outdoor Sculpture 2001 Incorporated for the Auckland Domain and funded by the Edmiston Trust with support of the New Zealand Lottery Grant Board Millennium Fund and the Auckland City Council.

"Spring is a simple stepped arrangement of three flat-topped rocks, following the slope of the land above the Domain's duck ponds, and framed at both ends by two bronze fern fronds. The work is unassuming, tacitly inviting passers-by to use the stones as a convenient seat-table or to lightly touch the viridian patination of the intriguing foliage - so that already the metallic surface of the bronze is shining through. The unpretentious forms carry rich meanings. Christine Hellyar has called the work a 'dry waterfall'. The surface of the uppermost stone is scored with irregular shallow grooves in a fan shape that guides imagined water (or the real flow after rain) towards the second stone with its shallow round indentation like a pool, while a straight channel bisects the third and lowest face. These increasingly calculated markings suggest human intervention in the water's path, providing a clue that the work commemorates Auckland's first public water supply, developed in 1866. The work is a visual metaphor of water as a life source, nourishing the fern fronds, which are diminutive at the top, but tall and unfurling at the end of the flow-path. The indigenous ponga ferns evoke a period long before settlement. The basalt rocks take us even further back in New Zealand's history, recalling the land's volcanic origins. So too does the north-south axis of the work, which not only leads the eye in the direction of the original piped water, but is also in line with the top of the Domain's crater rim."

Text written by Elizabeth Rankin, Professor of Art History, Auckland University, is from a publication sponsored by the P.A. Edmiston Trust, Auckland City Council and Hobson Community Board. Photograph taken by Gill Hanly courtesy of Urbis magazine.

CHRISTINE HELLYAR graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1969.

Hellyar's love of the natural world has inspired her work throughout her career. She is interested in the way people react with their environment. She uses a variety of media. In 1968 she was the first New Zealand artist to cast in latex rubber, a medium able to replicate perfectly the texture of the original object. She has since modeled and cast objects from nature - leaves, pine cones, branches, etc. - in various states from perfection to decay, working with a diverse range of materials; bronze, iron, clay, fabric, plaster, flax, grasses and found materials.

In the 1980s, working in bronze, Hellyar made tall, bronze garden sculptures of native plant stems and flowers, and then in the 1990s large vessels with cast flora around their rims. In 2002 she exhibited Mrs. Cook's Kete with Maureen Lander.

In 2003, Hellyar was one of the first artists to be awarded a Wild Creations Art Residency (a joint venture between DOC and Creative NZ). She spent six weeks on Mt. Taranaki and work from that period was exhibited in 2004 at Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth and in 2007 at Lopdell House, Titirangi, Auckland.

She exhibits regularly in both solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad; including Japan, Budapest, USA, Holland, Spain, Singapore and Australia.