Winning Sculpture

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32166, 9 December 1969, Page 13

Winning Sculpture

A 12ft-high construction in stainless steel by Para Matchitt, of Hamilton, has been chosen by the Wellington City Council’s advisory committee in a competition for a design for a sculpture for the new Wellington Civic Square.

Eight sculptors took part by invitation in the competition, and submitted miniatures of their designs. The council proposes to spend $6OOO on Hie project Mr Matchitt was born at Hiruharawa, on the East Coast of the North Island, and attended Auckland (Teachers’ College, Auckland University and Dunedin Teachers’ College, where he did special training in art education.

At present he is art adviser with the South Auckland Education Board. A regular exhibitor of

paintings and sculpture at New Zealand galleries, and at Paris and Tokoyo, Mr Matchitt lists among his special commissions work at the Hilton Hotel, Hong Kong, the San Francisco Air Terminal, the Connecticut State Teachers’ College, and the Harlequins Rugby Clubrooms in Twickenham. In New Zealand, Mr Matchitt has completed work for the Sacred Heart Girls’ College, Hamilton, the Commercial Hotel, Hamilton, the Waitomo Hotel, the International Hotel, Rotorua, and the Waipuna Lodge, Auckland. The advisory committee which judged the entries comprised the director of the National Art Gallery (Mr M. Day), the chairman of the Wellington Institute of Architects (Mr W. S. Toomath), the president of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts (Mr R. J. Waghorn), the chairman of the council’s cultural committee (Cr 0. E. Smuts-Kennedy), and Mr J. Bassant, of the

School of Design at Wellington Polytechnic. The photgraph shows Mr Matchitt’s winning model.