Boy Walking - Ronnie van Hout - aluminium and steel 2019

Boy Walking is a 5.6 metre-high sculpture by Melbourne-based New Zealander Ronnie van Hout, commissioned by Auckland Council in 2018 and installed in Potters Park in June 2019. It reportedly cost $550,000.

Van Hout adapted a figure from his Mephitis series of prints, showing a boyish figure walking through a doorway. To some eyes the work has only modest charm, but size-wise it raises a smile, with surreal proportions that perhaps wink at the elongated Dominion Road and nearby outsize Mt Eden. Van Hout collaborated with Brisbane-based UAP, experts in public sculpture and streetscape elements, creating a full-scale mould from polystyrene, then fabricating the work in aluminium sections. The process was finicky, with much grinding, sanding, and cleaning. The result is suitably immaculate.

The final parts of Boy Walking were welded together on top of an internal heavy steel armature, engineered to resist heavy winds, and the work installed on discrete footings. Not welcomed uncritically – did this cosmopolitan suburb truly need a simulacrum of a 1950’s style European boy striding purposefully along as a symbol of progress? - Boy Walkingis a debate-starter, and another of the hesitant engagements between Auckland and public art.

Please feel free to SUBMIT AN IMAGE of Boy Walking to NZPlaces.