19 Feb 2020

Art you can tramp to

From Nine To Noon, 11:49 am on 19 February 2020

Cherished for its national parks and great tramps, surely if anywhere in the world might get a reputation for public art you have to walk to it would be New Zealand. Over the summer arts commentator Mark Amery has been checking out just such art, including the work of West Coast duo Kemi and Nico who for the New Zealand Festival 2020 have placed a series of bespoke 'Urban Huts' in discreet bush locations on the Kapiti Coast. It all started for Mark with an encounter with a public artwork tramping with his family in the Tararuas in January. He'd hoped to reach this work by Billy Apple, marking the centre of New Zealand on a tramp that is marked 'difficult', but by nightfall had stumbled on the rogue anonymous work pictured above (any information as to the artists who put it here please email us). In our visual arts slot Mark also talks briefly about another public art trend that seems tailormade for New Zealand in summer, the mobile art gallery with the appearance in a truck in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington of the Nomadic Art Gallery (also pictured), a project that sees Christchurch's The Physics Room go to the beach at New Brighton - Silvercity, an installation by Mark Schroder - and Performance Arcade on Wellington's waterfront.