Graham Bennett

Guidelines II, 2017
Stainless steel, painted steel
3600 x 1555 x 1200 mm
Price on request

Guidelines II is part of a series of works created by the artist over a number of years, which focus on the map sections of New Zealand’s location on the globe and references the Transit of Venus.

The Transit of Venus occurs during a rare alignment of the planet Venus and the Sun. Venus passes across the front of the Sun and, in the 1700s by recording the time of the transit, trigonometry could be used to calculate the distance to Venus and the Sun - and for the first time astronomers were able to measure accurately the size of the solar system, and create accurate maps of Earth.

Affixed to the latitude/longitude gridlines are the SW / NE trajectories of New Zealand’s islands and pathways alluding to Polynesian migrations across the Pacific, the journeys of Cook and the journeys of Bennett’s own ancestors to New Zealand in 1864.

The boulders (granodiorite) are from the geographical centre of NZ, the boulder-bank in Nelson, opposite the artist’s family home.