Waiheke was once a quiet, remote place, until fast ferries made the commute easy. Now the idyllic island is a thriving community, and a home to the well heeled. In 2003, inspired by Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea, the locals developed their own art biennial, Sculpture on the Gulf, which draws tens of thousands of visitors. It’s just launched its tenth iteration (4–27 March 2022). For three weeks, visitors can walk the headland and encounter sculptures by New Zealand artists.

This year, it features works by thirty-two artists, selected—by Auckland War Memorial Museum curator Nigel Borell (Pirirakau, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea), Te Papa curator Rachel Yates (Vaisala, Sāmoa), Kriselle Baker, and Fiona Blanchard— from proposals.

The biggest work is by Waiheke local Anton Forde (Ngāti Ruanui, Pākehā). Te Kotahitanga o Whakamaru/The Unity of Protection encompasses fifty-five carved wooden pou, installed in a kaokao (arrow) pattern. Visible from the approaching ferry, they suggest a flock of migrating kuaka (godwits) or warriors in haka formation, while they stand watch as kaitiaki of the land. 

Other highlights include pieces by Janine Williams (Ngāti Pāoa) and Natalie Guy. As Waiheke mana whenua, Williams addresses the lasting effects of dispossession on her iwi. Her Black Picket Fence refers to the subdividing and fencing off of her ancestral land. She carved cross-shaped stars into her pickets, referencing the purapura whetū (star seeds) tukutuku pattern, affirming the right of Pāoa descendants to occupy these lands.

If Black Picket Fence is about dispossession, Guy’s The Genius Loci of the Chapel is about dislocation. Executed in textured fibreglass, her mid-century- style monoliths—based on Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp (1955) and John Scott’s Futuna Chapel in Wellington (1961)—seem deliberately out of place, as if transposed from a different place or time. ‘Genius loci refers to the distinctive atmosphere of a location, and, in science fiction, it refers to a place with its own intelligence’, the artist explains.