How Do I Relate With Nature – Whanganui

That inversion is what the title is asking about. A person made monumental and laid down among plantings does not dominate the garden the way a standing statue would; reclining, at rest, it becomes almost topographical, and the visitor moves around it as they would around a feature of the ground.

Bason Botanic Gardens is a good place for the argument. It was a working farm given to the city by Stanley and Blanche Bason and developed as public gardens on the coastal hills west of Whanganui – a landscape that is entirely the product of deliberate human arrangement while presenting itself as nature. A sculpture asking how we relate to nature, in a botanic garden, is standing on the question.

Whanganui has an unusually strong sculpture culture for its size, with the Sculpture Whanganui events that also produced the giant pencils of Balancing Act on Somme Parade.

The fabric of it are missing from the documentation.