Opposites attract in sculpture unveiling

By Caitlin Sykes

Drill through to the other side of the earth from Manukau and you might just find yourself in the Swedish city of Lund. The two cities are poles apart but a new sculpture being unveiled in Mangere tonight celebrates a special link between the two places. Sweden-based artist Juan Carlos Peirone has spent three weeks at a Te Wananga O Aotearoa campus in Mangere working on the sculpture, which has a twin in Lund, where Mr Peirone used to live. The unveiling of the Mangere sculpture coincides with the opening of an exhibition of Mr Peirone's work in Lund which will feature photos and film footage of his work in Manukau. Called Far Away From Where?, his art project began in 1993 and consists of an ever-growing global pattern of sculptures in places that are maximum distances apart on the earth. Mr Peirone has built six identical sculptures placed in polar opposites pairs across the world from Argentina to Mongolia to Mexico and the Andes. He says the idea of his work is to create new poles, other than the conventional north and south, for the world. "What I want to communicate is that there is no centre of the world. The centre is always where you are," Mr Peirone says. "The works are like signs and it is always the same sculpture signalling the different paths across the world." The sculptures all take the shape of traditional brick ovens and the artist says he chose this form for a number of reasons. Raised in the countryside in Argentina during the 1950s, Mr Peirone says one of his first memories is of his mother baking bread in such an oven. "That's the sentimental reason but I also didn't want to make a 'sculpture'. I wanted something anonymous, that didn't look like typical 'art'," he says. "All over the countryside you can see these shapes in South America and the Mediterranean. They're like natural landmarks to me." Manukau is only an approximate polar opposite to Lund and Mr Peirone says he has taken a metaphorical, rather than an exact approach, to positioning his latest work. The precise spot is actually in the sea near New Zealand but his plans to make the sculpture on land then ship it out to sea and film it sinking to the bottom of the ocean proved too difficult to co-ordinate. Instead he contacted Manukau artist Richard Cooper who offered him the opportunity to position his work at the Maori university in Mangere. And Mr Peirone says his three-week stay in Manukau has had echoes of a homecoming for him. "One think that has been very special and very familiar to me in New Zealand is the light and the stars and the sky. When I look up at the stars in the sky at night, it was such a surprise to me because it's very similar to South America," he says.

Publiced in Manukau Courier, Auckland, New Zealand