HALO in NZ Art Festival

Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts 2024

23 Feb.-17 March 2024. New Zealand Aotearoa's biennial arts festival presents HALO, New Zealand’s first digital public artwork, in its summer extravaganza of international artists, world premieres and trailblazing contemporary arts. In collaboration with Wellington Sculpture Trust, the Art Festival adds a new stage for sculpture in the festival skies. The monumental virtual artwork is presented on the waterfront and at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of NZ delighting thousands of locals and visitors to the capital city.

HALO 2023
Tākaka marble, extended reality
25mH x 21.3mDia.
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington NZ

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Artist Talk Poison Creek

Celebrating New Work

March 2024. Launching a new permanent land art commission, Poison Creek Sculpture Project welcomes visitors to a special event and Artist Talk celebrating The Snake Charmer in the high country tussock fields of Central Otago. Recently featured in Listener magazine, Poison Creek hosts a dynamic sculpture collection celebrating Aotearoa New Zealand's finest sculptors and rising stars. The project offers selected artist residencies, themed annual exhibitions, indoor gallery, public open days, and private group tours, with national and international visitors experiencing vibrant contemporary art in a sublime landscape.

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Land Art NZ

The Snake Charmer

January 2024. A new site-sensitive land artwork joins the permanent collection of Poison Creek Sculpture Project NZ. Developed during the artist's 2023 residency and research into the region’s cultural landscape, ecologies and histories, The Snake Charmer takes root on the slopes of Taraputa (Mt Pisa), above the ancestral Mata-Au (Clutha River). Blending mythology, science, and healing traditions in a striking geometric tableau over 21 metres diameter, the artwork creates a circular energy field. A sea of limestone and medicinal planting for Rongoā Māori circle a black granite figure which is visible through four openings in the regenerating landscape. These apertures mark ley lines between distant mountain peaks, a snake-bend in the awa, and points of significance at Poison Creek.

Celebrating HALO

NZs First Digital Public Sculpture

December 2023. HALO goes viral in New Zealand's capital city with thousands of locals and visitors creating the virtual artwork in real time and space on the waterfront and at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Wellington Sculpture Trust and Friends of Te Papa celebrate the success of New Zealand's first digital public sculpture gifted to the people of the capital city!

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Juliet Art Magazine

IN ABSENTIA: In Conversation with Gill Gatfield

November 2023:  An artist interview by critic and curator Sara Buoso for Juliet Art Magazine explores the extended reality sculpture In Absentia and the binding of virtual and physical worlds: ‘In this conversation, conceptual artist Gill Gatfield (based in Aotearoa New Zealand) discusses her digital activation, In Absentia 2023, presented in the UNESCO Geopark Island of Kefalonia, at Stonehenge, and in the British Museum. Through the potential of the metaverse, the artist addresses ways for expanding the poetic and political potential of digital sculpture in communal environments.’
 
Juliet-ArtMagazine.com (English + Italian) 

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HALO NZ Arts Review

New Zealand Arts Review

Arts Editor John Daly-Peoples writes about Gill Gatfield’s virtual sculpture in Wellington for New Zealand Arts Review:  "The Wellington Sculpture Trust is celebrating its 40th Anniversary by gifting an extended reality Sculpture to the city. The work ‘HALO’ by artist Gill Gatfield is a giant marble circle created in the Metaverse and available to all Wellingtonians via their mobile phone. The work will be visible from the Wellington waterfront promenade, and an outdoor terrace outside the kiosk within the Bush Walk at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. ... 

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Art + Technology Silicon Valley

Artist Showcase CODAsummit 2023

4-6 October 2023. Hosted by San Jose City in the heart of Silicon Valley, CODASummit 2023's annual three day meeting examines the intersections of art, techology and place. "In Artist Showcase 2023 NZ international artist, Gill Gatfield takes us a journey through ancient sites and unique landscapes, as she redefines the potential of sculpture in the immersive world of the Metaverse. Gatfield's work questions the state of humanity in the Anthropocene and carves active spaces that enable radical consiousness and build community across physical and digital worlds."  VIDEO

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NZ's First Digital Public Artwork

HALO over Te Whanganui-a-Tara

September 2023. Aotearoa New Zealand's first digital public artwork, HALO, is suspended high above the legendary harbour Te Whanganui-a-Tara in the capital city Wellington. The stone monument proposes a circle of unity connecting earth, sky and sea. At the leading edge of creative technology, this giant sculpture is viewed in 3D, at full scale in real time and space. It disperses sun and moon-light, and casts a shadow on the sea. Created by each person using their mobile phone or tablet at three site-specific locations, HALO is revealed through extended reality. Visitors to the waterfront can scan QR codes to view the artwork on Te Aranui o Pōneke / The Great Harbour Way – from the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of NZ Bush Walk harbour-front terrace, and from two seaside promenade sites: in front of Te Papa, and outside the Star Boating club. Commissioned by the Wellington Sculpture Trust as a 40th anniversary gift to the people of Wellington NZ, look for signs at Te Papa and on the harbour’s edge, and step into the Metaverse! 

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Launch of New Work

'HALO' unveiled at Te Papa marae

8 September 2023.  Gill Gatfield’s new virtual sculpture HALO is unveiled at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa by the Wellington Sculpture Trust at a special celebration at Rongomaraeroa. The marae is named after a place in the heavens where atua (Māori gods) meet in peace to discuss and settle issues. Created by master carver Cliff Whiting and the Te Papa Māori advisory group, Ngā Kaiwawao, the marae embraces the concept of mana taonga (the role of communities in the understanding and care of collections) and the principles of Te Tiriti, the Treaty of Waitangi. HALO was commissioned by Wellington Sculpture Trust to commemorate 40 years of trailblazing public art in New Zealand’s capital city.

New Public Artwork

Digital Monument in Capital City

Sept. 2023. Excitement is building and preparations underway for the unveiling of a new public artwork to be located between the sky and sea. The virtual monument is commissioned by the Wellington Sculpture Trust to celebrate 40 years of enriching public art in Aotearoa NZ’s capital city, and will be launched at a special event at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The large-scale work carves new dimensions in digital and physical space.

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