Urban Forest
The three nine-meter high stacks of bright spinning cubes named Wellington Urban Forest are the creation of a two-year collaboration between former Wellington sculptor Leon van den Eijkel and Hutt Valley engineer Allan Brown of Metallion Ltd.
The work was commissioned by the Wellington Sculpture Trust to extend the Meridian Energy Wind Sculpture Walk along the head of Evans Bay. Six wind sculptures in all are scheduled to be installed with a completion expected around mid 2008.
Trust Chairman Neil Plimmer says that Wellington Urban Forest is an intriguing play on urban values in a very exposed and natural area – each stack of five cubes represents an urban tree, and the three trees make the forest.
"The ability of the cubes to respond to the wind also conveys the strong need for our urban societies to adopt renewable energy such as wind power. The bright colours of the blocks and their movement will make a positive response to Wellington's reputation for windiness" he said.
Meridian Energy and other private donors, with support from the Wellington City Council, have provided the funding and the Trust and Council particularly welcome the strong private support for public art.
The Council additionally is developing the boardwalk and pathway along the strip between Evans Bay and Cobham Drive which will link the sculptures and provide seating and interpretation. “The six sculptures will all be of a size that makes them clearly visible from the road, which is the main route between the airport and the city, but the sculpture walk will also be a wonderful extra attraction for Wellington,” he said.
The Dutch-born artist arrived in Wellington in 1986 from The Hague growing up in wartime Holland. Leon van den Eijkel recounts that until the age of five he never saw a tree. “All the trees in my city had been cut down for heating so we children didn't know what a tree was. We had only black and white images of them. So we made urban trees from all sorts of wood, strips of cloth, broken pieces of glass and iron we found on the street.”
The artist has had a number of major commissions and is represented in major museums in Holland, the United States and New Zealand, including Te Papa. He was represented in the 2002 Changing Spaces exhibition in Wellington by The Cloud, placed on the Waterfront.
