Ronnie van Hout's Quasi art installation makes a new home in Wellington

Monday, 19 August 2019

Ronnie van Hout's art installation, Quasi, has made a new home looking over Wellington's Civic Square.

Much like its hunchback namesake, a complicated love has formed around the 5-metre tall hand-face sculpture Quasi that has been choppered into place on the roof of City Gallery Wellington.

Weighing 400 kilograms, the controversial sculpture which cost Christchurch about $90,555 has been secured in place at a $74,000 cost to the capital. The bill covered Wellington-proofing the installation, freight, work by the artist, the installation, and resource and building consents.

The 'monstrous hand' of Kiwi artist Ronnie van Hout hung from cables, hitched to a helicopter on Monday morning, flying through the crisp dawn air before being bolted in place. Quasi will now keep watch over the largely abandoned Te Ngākau Civic Square.

Gallery chief curator Robert Leonard said Quasi was 'about being a freak, being an outsider, being deformed and being misunderstood'.

Quasi, a sculpture by Ronnie van Hout has been installed on the roof of the City Gallery in Civic Square, Wellington.

* Quasi artwork cost Christchurch $90 a day before moving to the capital

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Quasi weighs 400 kilograms and required engineering to make it suitable for Wellington's conditions.

* Polarising artwork combining artist's face and hand on its way to Wellington**

'Quasi suggests something that's fake, or wrong. But also it's a reference of Quasimodo, the hunchback, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame,' Leonard said.

The 5-metre tall hand was lifted into place at dawn by helicopter.

The hideous bell-ringer is loathed by the local people but ends up saving them in a heroic act.

'In Wellington, Quasi will be looking out over Civic Square where so many of the buildings have been closed … and I think that will affect the way people interpret the sculpture.

'It's really interesting how the work plays off its loathsomeness, its disfigurement, its hideousness and almost asks to be loved.'

Engineers have spent several months designing a wind-safe system to hold Quasi in place after it spent the start of its life in Christchurch.

'It drew such a bizarre range of interpretations when it was on display in Christchurch and that's really quite intrinsic to the meaning of the work, that people don't know how to interpret Quasimodo. They project their own fears and anxieties.'

Leonard said it would be interesting to see how the Wellington public interpreted the sculpture.

The hand was commissioned in 2016. Leonard said the artist had a dark sense of humour and created work that was 'tragic-comic' and mostly 'self-portraiture'.

Wellington Sculpture Trust chairwoman Sue Elliott said the sculpture was likely to be in Wellington for at least four years.

She believed it was the first time an art piece had been installed in Wellington via helicopter.

'Quasi is not a pretty work and that is part of what Ronnie was trying to achieve. It's very unusual, it's of a really large scale and will sit over the Square and be on the Wellington skyline.

'I think people will be arrested by it.'