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Otago Sculpture Trust members and supporters hold a re-unveiling of the Dunedin-Edinburgh Stone. Photo by Jane Dawber.
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The Dunedin City Council must feel as though it's stuck
between a rock and a hard place.
A commemorative stone marking the sister city relationship
between Dunedin and Edinburgh has been blasted by leading
Dunedin artists.
The Dunedin-Edinburgh Stone was sited between Forsyth Barr
Stadium and the Water of Leith on November 22 last year,
while a reciprocal stone from Dunedin was installed on the
Edinburgh waterfront.
"The placement of the Dunedin stone, compared to Edinburgh,
is pathetic. It's an unconsidered installation," Otago
Sculpture Trust member Stephen Mulqueen said.
"The Dunedin stone is jammed up again the fence-line and
can't be fully appreciated by viewers. To experience any
three-dimensional object, you have to be able to walk around
it," Mr Mulqueen said.
"Its placement is an embarrassment and it clearly fails to
match the elegant placement of the sculpture on the Edinburgh
quayside. The plaque also fails to mention the project's
instigator and maker, Sylvia Stewart."
The project was conceived by Scottish sculptor Sylvia
Stewart, who travelled to Dunedin in 1999 to select a basalt
volcanic magma rock from the Water of Leith, which was
installed at Rennies Isle in Leith on the Edinburgh
waterfront.
She created the Aberdeenshire granite rock for Dunedin in
2007, to symbolise the historic cultural bond between the two
cities.
Otago Sculpture Trust members and supporters placed a series
of half circles around the sculpture last weekend to
illustrate the problem with the installation.
"The rocks create a ripple around the artwork," sculptor
Peter Nicholls said. "When you throw a rock in water, you get
concentric ripples. But the fence stops the ripples occurring
around this work and the rocks show that. The fence negates
the effect of a 3-D object by preventing people from moving
around it."
The Otago Sculpture Trust also held an unofficial
"re-unveiling".
Former DCC community life general manager Graeme Hall said
the area where the rock was sited was planned as a sculpture
area.
"We put it where it was considered appropriate and where it
had a relationship with the Leith. Everybody we spoke to said
it was a good idea, at the time."
nigel.benson@odt.co.nz
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