Mountain Fountain
Mountain Fountain is a public sculpture located in the Parnell suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. It was designed by Terry Stringer and depicts a bronze Cubist volcano thrusting up from a concrete base, with streams of water falling from three of the sculpture's four faces. It was erected in its original location in Aotea Square in 1981. In 2008, it was decommissioned and placed in storage during redevelopment of the square. It was relocated to its current site in the forecourt of Holy Trinity Cathedral in 2010. Commission In 1978, the Auckland Savings Bank donated $75,000 to sponsor the construction of a sculpture featuring moving water in Aotea Square. The Auckland City Council voted to hold the Aotea Square Water Sculpture competition to select a work for the site. In December 1979, a panel consisting of Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, Dame Catherine Tizard, Colin Brenton-Rule, Peter Bartlett and Greer Twiss selected Terry Stringer's design as the winner from 42 entries and a shortlist of six finalists. The jury praised Stringer's entry for dealing "potently with a recognizable element of New Zealand—the land's vigorous geological formation." Stringer, who was 34 years old and working as a lecturer at the Auckland Society of Arts and part-time office cleaner at the time, was awarded $6000 in prize money. Two other finalists were subsequently made into public sculptures, Tanya Ashken's Albatross (1986) in Whairepo Lagoon, Wellington, and Chris Booth's Te Whiringa o Manoko (1978–2009) in Kerikeri. Design and construction Mountain Fountain took a year to build and was unveiled by Mayor Colin Kay in April 1981 with the title The Aotea Square Water Feature. Stringer called the work "Mountain Fountain" and by the time of its re-siting in 2010 this had become its official name. The sculpture is a Cubist landscape made of 1.5 tonnes of bronze sheets fastened to a concrete and plywood framework. It measures tall, long and wide. It depicts a volcano erupting through the earth, alluding to the volcanic field upon which Auckland is built. Stringer envisioned the sculpture as bringing a piece of the wild nature of New Zealand's landscape into the city. Streams of water added to the sense of movement. Stringer wanted the sculpture to suggest "another of Auckland's volcanoes pushing up through Aotea Square" to offer "all the delights of hills and mountains" including "waterfalls, pools and streams and the pleasant sound of falling water". The triangular geometric rockiness of the sculpture's shape was intended to relate to the "canyon of buildings" encircling the square, in the tradition of the Trevi Fountain growing out of its building backdrop, while also differentiating it from Auckland's existing sculptural fountains. Stringer's original design included a bronze figure of a girl in modern clothes lying in a pool, representing "the spectator falling into a river and the spirit of falling water itself." The feature was removed because it was deemed too frivolous and Stringer realized after the sculpture was set out on the square that there was insufficient space to accommodate