Christchurch Quake Victim Wins People's Choice Award

Cantabrian artist Gary Baynes came within a whisker of being killed in the Canterbury earthquake last week by a press brake, a piece of heavy machinery he used to create ‘Vintage winds’, a sculpture that has just earned him a prestigious People’s Choice Award.

Baynes’s sculpture is one of 30 works currently on display at ‘Sculpture-in-the-Park’, an exhibition curated by Tim Walker and sited at The Sculpture Park @ Waitakaruru Arboretum, in the Waikato. The Award is welcome news at a bleak time for Cantabrian Baynes, bringing not only further recognition of his work but a prize pool of $1,500.

Baynes says that he is lucky to be alive. He was in his workshop in Burwood when the quake struck and had to dodge six machines with a combined weight of more than five tons, from among the many pieces of equipment he uses to construct his monumental sculptures. His winning sculpture is made from corten steel and stainless steel, and was a clear favourite with the public. Baynes says “I love to create and it always amazes me that it often leads me in the opposite direction to which I started. A world of never-ending possibilities. This Award is a welcome boost.” Baynes’s works can be found in private, corporate and public collections in New Zealand and throughout the world.

Exhibition Curator, Tim Walker (right) says that The Sculpture Park @ Waitakaruru Arboretum is a “series of fleeting conversations between artists, their works, a fast- changing site and audience makes for a truly exciting and unique experience of art and nature – a realm apart.”

Unable to travel because of the earthquake, Baynes will accept his People’s Choice Award in absentia. The ceremony will be held at a private function in The Sculpture Park @ Waitakaruru Arboretum this evening, Thursday 3 March.

A catalogue of the exhibition, with an introduction by Curator Tim Walker, will also be launched that night - rrp $35