Hemo Gorge Gateway Sculpture

In collaboration with the New Zealand Transport Agency, Rotorua Lakes Council sought tenders from interested individuals or groups to create or contribute to a major sculptural work to be installed within a new 50-meter diameter roundabout. The roundabout has a 7-meter circulating lane and three legs which feed into SH5/Old Taupo Road, SH30/Hemo Road towards Rotorua CBD and SH5/Hemo Road towards Taupo, with an additional access to Te Puia carpark. The roundabout will have three underpasses into its centre.

For the first time in Rotorua history we will have a contemporary artwork which commemorates this subterranean journey of these Atua and a direct correlation between their journeys throughout the subterranean catacombs and the post eruption surface features. These strands of rising heat and steam symbolically represent the connectedness of the communities who have made these special places their homes among Geothermal fields and the post eruption caldera’s within the Taupo volcanic zone.

Internationally acclaimed for his small scale adornment works, Stacy Gordine is the tumu (head of school) for Te Takapū o Rotowhio (National Stone and Bone Carving School) at the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute (‘NZMACI’).

With over 25 years’ experience as a multimedia carver and adornment artist, Stacy has carved alongside the indigenous peoples of both Alaska and Hawai’i, serving not only as tutor but also as student as he practiced his craft alongside the indigenous master artists.

Arriving to NZMACI in 2013, Stacy continues the legacy of his great-uncles’ Pineamine and Hone Te Kauru Taiapa, who were students of the original carving school in Rotorua in 1927 and tutored many of today’s master carvers. Stacy has led the design of Tū Awhionuku with the suport of the NZMACI team.