In its 25th anniversary year, SCAPE Public Art is proud to present Season 2023.

Marked out with four kilometres of red fabric tape, the Season walking trail leads people to inspiring, innovative and thought-provoking works by New Zealand artists on their public art debut.

Although it’s not always obvious, each artwork responds to the curatorial theme of The Gift.

Managing Curator, Tyson Campbell, explains: “a gift has many functions and it sits within a circuitry of exchange, transaction and recognition. It can be a physical exchange between people, maybe a life lesson or perhaps an experience that makes a long-lasting impression … Gifts, as a process of exchange, facilitate multi-faceted symbolic and material outcome, sometimes including indebtedness and the giving away, or even destruction, of valuable resources.” Referring to the work of French Philosopher Jacques Derrida, Tyson notes that once a gift is given, the recipient “is made responsible for a counter-gift, which may be as simple as acknowledging the gift-giver’s generosity. The gift can link people together; it can set up circumstances, tensions, and create ruptures between people and contexts.”

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