A new exhibition curated by Gina FergusonFeaturing more than 30 sculptures integrated into the park’s 2km art-in-nature trail

Stories in the Landscape 2022 profiles emerging and established artists and crafts people from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. This year’s exhibition features over 30 sculptural propositions: from the esoteric, the ephemeral, site responsive, interactive, performative and the crafted object, to the monumental, figurative, and conceptual.

The Sculpture Park at Waitakaruru Arboretum is a site that offers historical, environmental and spatial possibilities. There are dynamic sweeping vistas, dramatic scenic pockets, small lakes, and wide-open spaces alongside denser clusters of bush – the terrain presents an ever changing landscape providing an engaging experience for artists and visitors when walking the 2km trail.

These are precarious times where we face many challenges and uncertainties; our perspective on the world around us is changing and with that change comes a need to articulate narratives with greater urgency. This exhibition generates new conversations through the breadth of stories that are shared and located within the landscape. The stories are diverse: personal, cultural, environmental, political, local and global; some emerge from the material and making process, some are singular, some multiple and layered, some are loud while others are quiet.

Together these artists present a range of approaches with works that are situated along the trail to instigate individual strands that can be threaded together like chapters in a book, enabling an ever changing narrative to unfold.  As a collective story, it is one that acknowledges our diversity, gives voice to our embodied histories, whenua, place and time.

Gina Ferguson | Curator, Stories in the Landscape 2022