The Invercargill Public Art Trail Trust will be unveiling the first piece of a planned art trail around the city.
Trustees Joc O’Donnell and Sarah Hannan said they were passionate about both art and Invercargill.
They believed there was huge scope to create a kind of art trail across the city, which would add vibrancy and interest for both locals and tourists.
O’Donnell said she had an idea it was possible to approach businesses and funders to make their vision a reality — and the first supporter arrived like a Christmas present.
"I had this theory that it wouldn't be too hard to get businesses and funders to commit maybe $5000 or $10,000 a year.
"If we pulled the money once a year that we could do a significant sculpture in the city to create a sculpture walk.
"So I was at a Christmas function with Graeme Hill and we were just talking about it and after Christmas he sent me a cheque for $10,000 and said ‘get on with it’."
After visiting cities in Spain and Melbourne which have similar art trails, O’Donnell felt inspired and believed this could be something to attract people to the city.
"Something that ... people can interact with in everyday life and not even think about it as art most of the time."
Hannan said after receiving the first cheque, they approached the ILT Community Trust and Aotearoa Gaming Trust, which helped them get over $100,000 in order to commission the first sculpture.
Queenstown artist Shane Wooldridge created the piece Just Add Life, which will be placed in front of Invercargill Central Ltd in Esk St.
"It is a massive raindrop, but it's made out of a lot of materials from Southland," O’Donnell said.
"It's got aluminium from the smelter in it, it's got dunite from Greenhills Quarries, it's got some bricks from the old CBD before this new mall was built and it's even got little pieces of asphalt that came from the old CBD that have been polished up."
Hannan said it translated a lot of the region’s energy.
"The idea of that drop of water kind of signifies everything about Southland in terms of our economy — from Tiwai smelter to our farms — our economy is driven by water and weather."
The 5-tonne, 4m-plus sculpture will be unveiled and blessed at 9am on Tuesday.
While the main idea was to have sculptures, O’Donnell and Hannan said the trail would give space to every form of art.
"We've kept it quite wide open when we set up the trust so that if we decided maybe we wanted to do up a laneway, we've left it open enough that we can do that.
"If we can get the funding in place and get people on board, then we could do lots of things.
"It is about creating interest and a bit of personality for it."
