Artist of high standing

Waiheke Island sculptor Anton Forde talks about creating the largest contemporary pou installation of his career.

- SARAH CATHERALL

Not long after sunrise, in an industrial part of Waiheke Island, away from the curving coastline and waterfront mansions, Anton Forde arrives at his yard and begins work. After he parks his truck, the artist gestures to a contemporary Māori pou - carved from sustainably sourced Australian hardwood - near the entrance to his yard and gallery, believing it to represent his late grandmother. Two unfinished pou lie against a building wall. Rocks and bits of broken stone are scattered near piles of wood, tools and an open shed.

Forde (Ngāti Ruanui, Taranaki) is one of New Zealand's most exciting contemporary sculptors. He is a recognised Ngāi Tahu pounamu artist. Forde also works with other stonebasalt/ōnewa, obsidian/tühua from Waiheke and andesite/kökawa from Taranaki Maunga.

Best known for his site-specific installations of contemporary pou, the 50-year-old was last year one of two New Zealand artists invited to exhibit at Bondi's Sculpture by the Sea, the world's largest sculpture exhibition, where he won the Artist's Pick Award for Papare/Protection. In March this year, he exhibited Papare/ Protection in a different configuration at Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe in Perth, Western Australia, where he received the 2024 Mostyn Family Foundation Artist subsidy and Sculpture by the Sea Staff Selection Award.

Each pou Forde creates has a pounamu taonga/necklace around its neck in the shape of a teardrop. The contemporary pou are becoming the artist's signature works. They can exist as individual pieces, but also as a collective, like a village.

His latest pou installation, Papare Eighty.one, is now at Pātaka Art + Museum in Porirua. It features 81 carved wooden pou that appear as sentinels in the gallery. Forde is not a numerologist - he's been asked a lot if he is - but the number of pou and their arrangement in an installation has to work in each creation.