WAYFINDER
... a breath of our shared journey.
A millenium celebration project for the NEW LYNN COMMUNITY CENTRE
Waitakere City, New Zealand
Approximately 250 members of the New Lynn community participated in rituals for the creation of this public artwork. I facilitated design gatherings and open days, engaging people in a very hands on way. The steel ‘scrolls’ in the core of the structure hold the record of these events, with words expressing memory, hopes and dreams for New Lynn. A community procession and karakia (prayer) travelled the sculpture through the streets, to farewell the old community centre and to celebrate the arrival of Wayfinder to its place at the front of the new building.
‘This City’s newest and most exciting... a dazzling piece of sculpture, combining history and heritage.’
Bob Harvey QSO, JP, Mayor of Waitakere City 2001
‘Caroline is a highly professional and innovative artist with a real grasp of
the way urban places work. Her ability to work with, and give expression to, the diversity of aesthetic expectations of people in our community, Maori, Pacific Island peoples, other ethnic groups, old and young, has been outstanding.’
Ann Magee, Director Strategic Projects, Waitakere City Council 2001
Wayfinder 2000
Client: Waitakere City Council
Project Team: Caroline Robinson, Cabal
New Lynn Community and Iwi Representatives
Springbank General Metalwork
6.5m x 1.8m
mild steel and copper
Photo: Simon Devitt
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Caroline Robinson:
www.carolinerobinson.co.nz
ART WITHIN LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE
personal and collective mythology
Ideas about place making are changing, as our society feels the torque of the unsustainable environmental pressures we have put on the earth. Added to the rise of complexity in our social and cultural dynamics, these challenges evoke a call for a deeper humanity and a more bold imagination. Being at the heart of this collective conversation is what art means to me, exploring questions about who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.
I sculpt and build with durable materials such as stone, steel and earth, animating public and private spaces with a raw physicality and mythology. The wisdom embedded within each context inspires me, and I use both instinct and active research to draw connections through cultural memory and identity, geology, biology and the full diversity of life expressed within our physical landscapes. The engagement and enhancement of this richness is both provocative and practical as a way of thinking about the future landscapes we are building.
