An eye-catching new sculpture in Arrowtown’s been a six-month labour of love for a local gallery owner and sculptor.
Birdwoods South Gallery’s Jack Stobart recently installed the 3.5-metre-high piece — aptly named ‘The Crescendo’ — which tips the scales at 2.2 tonnes, outside his premises in a courtyard off Buckingham St.
Made from benchtop-grade white granite, sourced from a quarry in his home country of Zimbabwe, Stobart completed about 60% of the artwork there, using powertools, with Tendai Gwaravaza, a Zimbabwean sculptor under whom Stobart completed a sculpting apprenticeship.
While trained to create Zimbabwean stone sculptures using simple handmade tools, Stobart says the granite’s much harder, so they had to use angle grinders, diamond polishers and the like.
‘‘Because it’s benchtop-grade, the idea is it doesn’t scratch, so it takes a little bit longer, but it’s well worth it — you’ll never need to do anything to the finish, it’ll be like that forever.’’
Reminiscent of a Māori pikorua (twist), Stobart says he was slightly limited in his design because of the shape of the rock he was getting — which weighed a total of 7 tonnes.
Working on it in Zimbabwe, he and Gwaravaza had to bring in a Hiab every couple of days.
‘‘We would carve part of it, but every time we needed to move it, we had to roll it, so we needed the Hiab.’’
While a few ‘‘joining rods’’, used to connect the two limbs of stone, were left in place to help strengthen it while it was freighted to Arrowtown, Stobart admits there was a bit of tension while the finished product was being lifted into its new home.
‘‘That’s when it was at its weakest … that was the point where we were most nervous — the majority of the weight’s down the bottom and in the base.
‘‘All of the work’s done with the sculpture lying down, and we had to lift it vertically.
‘‘There was no easy way of doing it, we just had to see if it would work.’’
While the work’s technically for sale, Stobart says he’d prefer if that piece remained in situ and was used as inspiration for commissions.
As to the price of something similar?
‘‘Probably about $50,000 or $60,000.
‘‘It’s a lot of money, but then it’s six months of labour for two people as well … It’s definitely a very niche purchase, but it’s obviously something that’s pretty monumental.’’
