Rob Waanders “Discovery by Inspiration” or “Ties That Bind Pukerua Bay Community”, Pukerua Bay, 2001-2002

This artwork in Pukerua Bay is in a (mostly) quiet, secluded bush setting. It sits at the edge of the Waimapihi Stream on a path through the Koawa Ngaro Reserve, a small gully known to locals as Secret Valley. Despite its proximity to the Pukerua Bay train station, State Highway 1 and housing, this sculpture sits quietly amongst the trees with birds like Piwakawaka (New Zealand fantail) flying around it. The title of this artwork “Discovery by Inspiration” seems to directly refer to this secluded location off the beaten track. However Waanders said that that name was chosen by another Pukerua Bay local and his preferred name for the work is “The Ties That Bind Pukerua Bay Community”. This title also references the theme Ties That Bind in a 1985 multimedia competition at the Wellington art gallery.

If you follow the path through the Secret Valley you walk past it. When this gully, once a local dumping ground was revitalised Waanders “recycled” a huge unwanted non-native macrocarpa tree in the Secret Valley with his son Vincent to make the sculpture. Therefore the material used comes directly from the environment in which the sculpture sits. It looks like it has always been there and with each year that passes becomes more part of its environment as the wood ages and moss grows over the wood. The sculpture was created close to its present site and rolled on railway sleepers onto it’s concrete plinth where it remains today. Although it was once rolled into the stream and was retrieved and re-installed by Porirua City Council.

Waanders is inspired by the work of Andy Goldsworthy, an English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures, and Martin Hill who is a New Zealand environmental artist based in Otago.

Waanders also carved three pou (one at either end of the Secret Valley and one at the Pukerua Bay end of Ara Harakeke (the flax pathway). The intention was for this to be the first of many sculptures on a sculpture trail that would go from Plimmerton to Pukerua Bay. Rob Waanders had seen this idea in a similar project in his native Netherlands. He thought that a range of artists while not being commissioned or paid for their sculptures could use it as an effective advertisement for their work. Waander said that “regretfully I could not find artist/sculptors to spend unpaid time like me to produce a sculpture” so unfortunately this never eventuated.

References:

Pukerua Bay Community website https://www.pukeruabay.org.nz/local-artists/ [date accessed 24 August 2021]

“Te Ara Pukerua 2019” - Pukerua Bay Residents Association 2019 Calendar.

Email correspondence between Rob Waanders and Isaac du Toit, 24 August 2021

“ ‘Secret Valley’ work hoped to inspire sculptor’s trail” Kapiti Observer and Kapi Mana , 6 & 7 May 2002