Dion Hitchens- Interaction and collaboration

In this week, Dion Hitchens made a lecture about his sculpture practice. Through watching lots of his sculpture practice I found the works look quite bizarre and much more different from traditional sculpture. I have never done or participated in making sculpture. And to me, the concept of 3D objection is fuzzy. However, as a green hand in sculpture, what I strongly realized in Dion Hitchens' practice is culture and that is what Dion always mentioned in his lecture. Also, another element in his practice which strongly impressed me and made me understood more about sculpture is site.
First I would like to explore culture relating to Dion's work because I think the element culture is incisively and vividly reflected. By looking at his art work, most of them are built as public art projects. This point make me think how hard to making project for public. Making object for public is not as easy as for private. There are so many issues to consider, like a fund, time slicing, materials, technical support. All these things may narrow a designer's idea. Most importantly, a public art object people making must be accepted by the public of an specific area. Culture refection is a good method for designer to think about cause it can effectively accepted and confirmed by public. So, it's fantastic to see lots of Maori culture elements in Dion's art making.
For example, Matariki Star Waka sculpture, made by Dion Hitchens and Charles Koroneho. It is a Maori culture based work and viewer can see various elements related to Maori culture. The most obvious decorations on the Matariki Star Waka are the constellations which are linked by lines that help define different shapes. And when sky becomes dark, these flashy constellations look magnificent. At the beginning, I'm not very familiar with Maori culture and I don't know what are these constellations symbolizing . So, by searching what is Matariki from the Internet I understand Maori worshiping star image, because Maori think star image decide time, ship's position and the harvest of future years.
“They were transformed into objects of remembrance, marking places of historic or spiritual importance where the community gathered to conduct ceremonies, tell stories and share knowledge,” Charles Koroneho said. “This seemed a very fitting theme for a community building and library named Matariki.”

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK0606/S00288.htm

Obviously, from what Charles Koroneho said, Matariki Star Waka sculpture is something that directly and successfully related to the Maori culture.
Another important element I can strongly feel from Dion's sculpture is the site. It's also a knotty problem to deal with. It's really hard to decide where to put a huge scale sculpture at. For a public artwork, outside of street is just a show room in a gallery. Because a site for a artwork is significant. Just like our tutors' saying" a good display can make your work better and a bad display can kill it." I really like the site of Dion's Kotuku, like two iron birds are flying in the sky. The two iron birds are tied on the upside of that area by several thin gage wires(I guess) looks like a symbol of that place, people can see this sculpture from a long distance. Also, the position of the two birds is interesting to see, both of them goes to a negative direction and this should be a balance for site.