After 15 years in the dark, an Oamaru stone sculpture has been brought to light in Mahika Kai Mahika Toi, the new building extension at Forrester Gallery.<\/p>\n
Carved by \u014ctepoti Dunedin-based stonemason artist and sculptor Marcus Wainwright, it was inspired by Botticelli\u2019s artwork, Judith with the head of Holofernes.<\/p>\n
The circa 1470 work features Judith and her maid servant Abra carrying the head of her foe, the enemy Holofernes based on the biblical narrative.<\/p>\n
The carving was gifted by the artist after his exhibition 8 Years, 8 Works, Judith (2007) was unwrapped from storage to be permanently installed in the new atrium at the gallery.<\/p>\n
Wainwright said he felt \u2018\u2018very fortunate\u2019\u2019 it had pride of place in the new gallery space.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I feel very fortunate that she now has a space like that, because I didn\u2019t want to sell her.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I knew once it was sold it would be put in someone else\u2019s space only and it is hard to put artworks into places where you have natural light, which can bleach them, but that\u2019s the nice thing about stone.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
He said he was happy the traditional and \u2018\u2018emotional and figurative work\u2019\u2019 of Judith was housed in Oamaru.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I like going to Oamaru, I like the people there, they\u2019ve got that sort of romantic vision of the olden days, which you still feel there, and I sort of live in the olden days,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Waitaki District Council arts, culture and libraries manager Chloe Searle was \u2018\u2018thrilled\u2019\u2019 to see the piece installed.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018When I learnt from the gallery\u2019s former director, Warwick Smith, that Marcus had donated this work with the intention that it would one day be incorporated into the redeveloped building, I knew we had to find a place for it as part of this project.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s great to be able to honour this vision,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
The sculpture took three months in total to carve, Wainwright said he wanted to do something larger and figurative along the lines of traditional carving.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The traditional trade revolves around church work, cathedrals and classic stonemasonry work, so from my skill level I went through monumental to decorative carving, then grotesques, and of course human figures are the last challenge.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Wainwright originally carved the piece in the Vogel St artists\u2019 basement in Dunedin and said it was \u2018\u2018strange unpacking her\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I have virtually moved on from all that type of work of traditional carving to a different sort of career choice, but it\u2019s nice that she was there.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I still loved exploring it and carving it, and it\u2019s very technical work, while it looks creative,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
He said he was originally inspired by paintings of the biblical heroine Judith by the Italian Renaissance artist, Sandro Botticelli, and what it stood for.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s a story of female sacrifice … but the back story is so chilling now, that they\u2019ve always been fighting for peace and there\u2019s a delicate balance between the sword and the olive leaf.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Wainwright, who trained as a headstone mason in Germany, has always been fascinated by the work of crafts people and artisans from a bygone era.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Through my apprenticeship, everyone looked up to the great works from Michelangelo and the very commonly known popular artists, and I\u2019ve done my trips to Italy and Paris to the grand cemeteries and looked at all the beautiful spaces.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Wainwright said while you can see the \u2018\u2018tail-end\u2019\u2019 of some of that more traditional carving in New Zealand in cemeteries, churches and historic buildings he was motivated to move on to building work.<\/p>\n
He is now a director at Wainwright & Hickey, specialists in heritage stone masonry and structural strengthening.<\/p>\n
Wainwright & Hickey recently worked on strengthening the Hall of Memories building at Waitaki Boys\u2019 High School in Oamaru.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 15 years in the dark, an Oamaru stone sculpture has been brought to light in Mahika Kai…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-453274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}