The 2015–16 exhibition

29 November 2015 – 6 March 2016

Its popularity growing, by 2015 Sculpture in the Gardens was bringing thousands of art lovers out to experience the beauty of the gardens, and introducing many garden enthusiasts to the experience of art.

Each sculpture this exhibition initiated a conversation between nature and culture, people and place. Regan Gentry’s recycled timber trees, Jeff Thomson’s wired-over pergola, and the moulded jugs of John Ferguson’s giant purple foxglove all stood as sentinels, marking the place to find an unlikely combination of sculptural materials. Ideas were put in motion: Llew Summers sent a couple waltzing To the End of Love while Bev Goodwin’s Girl Buoys pirouetted on the surface of the lake. Graham Bennett’s column of horizontal steel figures turned slowly to Push Away the Sky, keeping the air free for Sam Duckor-Jones’ ceramic figures performing headstands. Jamie Pickernell’s huge tripod of three interdependent steel struts held up an inaccessible viewing platform, just as Ramón Robertson’s figures peered down at us from their lofty shelf, keeping their distance from being toppled by Richard Wedekind’s three outsized dominoes beyond.

Formal concerns governed the stacking of glass balls into Garry Nash’s Waypoint on the plaza in front of the Visitor Centre, and geometry rules in the proportioning of John Edgar’s basalt disk as it nestled into the Urban Trees area. Marté Szirmay’s bronze disc and grid animated the light falling through its form into restless chequered patterns in contrast to the zen choreography of Natalie Guy’s Japanese garden titled karesansui. Manurewa means place of flying birds in Māori, and Jonathan Organ and Jessica Pearless made a large blind for unobtrusive observation of feathered friends. James Wright’s corten steel winged shapes led from the Rose Garden down into the Gondwanaland area, while Bing Dawe’s Titipounamu: A Necklace with Lost Gems is a reminder that before humans arrived, Aotearoa was bird land. Chris Moore’s gramophone enchants us with bird song and Samantha Lissette’s bronze bird offers a sturdy back to clamber on, en route to Lucy Bucknall’s baboon reading a book, waiting to be discovered in the trees by the lake.

The artists participating in 2015 were: Graham Bennett, Lucy Bucknall, Bing Dawe, Sam Duckor-Jones, John Edgar, John Ferguson, Regan Gentry, Bev Goodwin, Natalie Guy, Samantha Lissette, Chris Moore, Garry Nash, Jonathan Organ & Jessica Pearless, Jamie Pickernell, Ramón Robertson, Llew Summers, Marté Szirmay, Jeff Thomson, Richard Wedekind, and James Wright.