Te Ahu a Turanga: The Story Behind The Art On New Zealand's Newest Highway
The new Te Ahu a Turanga Highway crossing the Ruahine Ranges is bookmarked on both ends by mahi toi (artwork), by two prominent Māori artists.
The first drivers crossed over the 11.5km four-lane highway on Wednesday morning. It replaces the old State Highway 3 through the Manawatū Gorge which closed in 2017 due to slips
Warren Warbrick (Rangitāne) was one of three artists who worked on the project.
He said it was good to see his work go from drawings on paper to computer models to finally seeing it become a reality.
"For me it's not really whether I'm happy or not, it's whether our people are happy," he said.
The overarching concept for all the art pieces along the road was 'he aho tangata' - 'the human threads that bind us.'
On the Palmerston North end of the new highway stands one of Warbrick's sculptures made of a concrete base named Aputa ki Wairau and a metal structure named Hine-te-Iwaiwa.
Warbrick said the metal structure represents a turuturu, or weaving peg, whose 'thread' connects with the roundabout on the other side of the highway near Woodville.
"Each of the roundabouts, although they are not created to look like turuturu but they are symbolic of it, so when you have two turuturu you have a line that stretches between the two that is referred to as the aho, or the sacred thread... So what we are looking at is the idea of the roundabouts being the turuturu and the road being that sacred thread."
The 12 metre high sculpture on the Woodville roundabout is named Poutahu, and was designed and created by prominent artist Sandy Adsett.
Warbrick said he has known Adsett for many years and it was great to have the opportunity to work with him.
"It's one thing to know him but its quite a different thing to work with him, it's been very very cool," he said.
Adsett (Ngāti Pahauwera, Ngāti Kahungunu) told RNZ there would be a lot more artwork along the highway but the soil on the either side wasn't able to hold much weight, so they shifted focus to the roundabouts, the lookout and the bridges along the highway.
Adsett said the Poutahu sculpture near Woodville was based the structure of old wharenui that had a vertical pole at the centre of the whare to provide strength to the tahuhu (ridge beam).
"I was learning as I went, on what could happen and of course the engineers would say 'well we could do [this] but we can't do that.' So there was a lot of discussions about the structure so it was interesting."
Adsett said if there was going to be artworks and sculptures on major infrastructure projects like the Ahu a Turanga highway he was glad that the imagery was specific to New Zealand.
"I think that in terms of Aotearoa our imagery is specific to Aotearoa, it's indigenous, so for overseas travellers or even for our own people to see the works, I won't say it's a comfort thing, but it's a pleasure to feel as though they have the ability to stand in these prominent public places and hold their own."
It will be interesting to see the response to the artwork from both Māori and non-Māori, he said.
"I think the enthusiasm and the encouragement of our different iwi was one that you respected and wanted to try and offer something and hopefully... our own people will accept the works... that we were able to do."
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