More than 100 joined Trustees on a cold but fine evening for the ‘unveiling’ of Sabine Marcelis’ beautiful work on the four plinths. Sabine, an internationally renowned designer, is the recipient of the ninth Collin Post 4 Plinths Project commission and was awarded $50,000 to realise her work, Merging Blocks. The funds are generously donated by the family of the late Collin Post.
Sabine’s works are often functional and frequently employ production techniques and materials more common to factories and construction. Her design practice has seen her named the winner of the Elle Décor Designer of the Year Award in 2023.
Merging Blocks (2024) marks a significant moment in Sabine’s practice, bringing an element of scale and permanency. With the four large coloured and mirrored glass volumes, in varying proportions and orientations, injecting warmth into the grey bollards and their surrounds.
Sabine is known for her experimental approach to materiality and light. Her works often play with perception and perspective, using subtle transparencies, mirrored finishes and varying gradients, they explore the interplay of colour, shapes, and light.
The Sculpture Trust trustees and our arts advisors were impressed with the way Merging Blocksfundamentally changes perceptions by treating the plinths as part of the artwork. It is both exciting and beautiful with her use of colour and reflection giving the work a jewel-like quality.
Sabine said of her work: “Having spent much of my childhood in New Zealand, that formative period in which connection and understanding of place are solidified in ways that we often do not understand until much later, this project marks something special for me.
“Each volume has been designed to reflect a different aspect of the city: the faces of those passing, the tangle of clouds or the emptiness of the sky – they will show us the mood of a city and the hijinks of the weather.
“The works are also activated by the shifting light of their location. Throughout the day, as the light changes so too does the footprint of each block. On bright days, it will stretch and increase, casting a glow across pavements, faces and buildings. The Blocks will alter our experience of this space through colour, shape, and light.”
Sabine was born in the Netherlands, her family immigrated to New Zealand when she was 10 years old, and she returned to Holland when she was 23, now running her practice from the harbour of Rotterdam. After graduating from the Design Academy of Eindhoven in 2011, she began working as an independent designer within the fields of product, installation, and spatial design. Characterised by pure forms that highlight material properties, her works are housed in the permanent collections throughout Europe.
Merging Blocks will stay on this site between Te Papa and the waterfront for two years.
The partnership with the Post family celebrates and commemorates the late Collin Post and his love of the arts, in particular sculpture.
Creative New Zealand also helped fund this work along with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands who kindly supported the Trusts unveiling function held at Te Papa on March 27.
