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Make Way: Regan Gentry installation view, 2009, City Gallery Wellington. Image: Andrew Beck.

 

Make Way: Regan Gentry

27 September - 22 November 2009 in the Hirschfeld Gallery

Cities should be designed for people, insists sculptor Regan Gentry. Public space and public life should be at the heart of urban planning, and of the city itself. Make Way: Regan Gentry took the form of a highway flyover, made entirely from prefabricated cane baskets, rods and twine, spanning the 12 metre long gallery. Its unlikely architecture and location in the gallery challenged conventional urban planning, and asserted humans’ place within the city landscape.

Enter the space visitors encountered the arching highway from beneath, an experience not dissimilar to standing between the bulky concrete pillars of a motorway flyover. Cane baskets replaced concrete and steel girders, an intricate hand-knotting technique the movement of vast construction machinery. This flyover looked incapable of bearing weight, and the natural cane material evoked associations of ungracefully aging wicker outdoor furniture. Such odd combinations are deliberately staged by the artist, new stories exposed through unusual material juxtapositions.

Regan Gentry’s experience as a pedestrian led him to think about the influence of urban planning on everyday living. It is projected that by 2025 half the world’s population will live in cities.[1] Urban infrastructure races to keep pace with this frightening expansion. We are increasingly reliant on cars and roads to negotiate urban sprawl, and yet they are a direct cause of pollution, alienation and social division. Make Way points to this inconsistency, suggesting the need for a planning model which responds to both people and the environment.

Bridges and road structures are often associated with human accomplishment, the triumph against natural forces and material limitations. In this work an emblem of heroic architecture was transformed into an expression of imaginative possibility. The handmade-looking structure hinted at a different way of thinking about getting from A to B, of negotiating shared space, and of sharing fantasy.

…people thought bridges were designed specially for cars, mere pieces of road stuck up on legs of iron or concrete, whereas my father thought bridges were the connections that would hold everything together. Bridges gone, perhaps the whole world would fall apart, like a quartered orange.
Margaret Mahy, The Bridge Builder

Abby Cunnane
Michael Hirschfeld Gallery Curator

* Please note a braille translation of this text appears in the gallery. The essay text is also available at the front desk on enquiry.

[1] Richard Rogers, Cities for a Small Planet (ed Philip Gumuchdijian). London: Faber and Faber, 1997.