Neon Navigations: Paul Hartigan's 'Colony'

Navigate. Verb. 

1. Plan and direct the route or course of a ship, aircraft, or other form of transport, especially by using instruments or maps. 2. Sail or travel over (a stretch of water or terrain). Guide (a vessel or vehicle) over a specified route or terrain. 

Concise Oxford Dictionary: Tenth Edition, edited by Judy Pearsall. 1999: PP 951

In 2003, four years after Ms Pearsall edited the tome that is the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Paul Hartigan was commissioned by the University of Auckland to create a work for the newly built Faculty of Engineering on Symonds Street. Over nearly two decades, Colony has served as a gently glowing, never fading vermillion neon beacon in an otherwise stark cityscape. Having won the Metro Award for Best Public Sculpture in 2006, it has become a familiar, perhaps even essential, way marker for anyone navigating their way along Symonds Street in central Auckland.

I distinctly remember Colony appearing. I was part way through my undergraduate Arts degree when the much hyped new Engineering building was opened. It’s vast monolithic concrete walls and open expanses of green tinted glass were somewhat intimidating to the 20 something bookish arts student I was who had to find her way up the hill from Arts One to the fancy new lecture theatres where my Film Noir and the Gothic lecture was held. It felt more than a little incongruous (bordering on the surreal) to absorb film history and theories of Victorian and mid-century Gothic narratives all while encased in the concrete and glass of the shiny, perfect, thoroughly cutting edge lecture theatre. That all changed for me when Colony appeared.

What was once meters of flat, cold, soulless concrete was transformed seemingly overnight. A building that once seemed to say ‘this is where serious mathematics equations are solved, and you do not belong here’ instantly became my preferred place to sit and read between lectures. There was just something about the work which resonated with me. It was more than the fact the red glow of the bold gestural marks that flowed across the concrete wall softened what was previously a foreboding hard expanse of grey. Colony was then, and remains for me to be a work about open ended possibilities. About the multitude of directions, twists and turns that life can take, but somehow it all works out and makes sense in the end. While this is a very personal experience, this is what art is all about. It’s about shifting your view. Altering your experience. All truly good art offers a tangible counterpoint to the everyday that enables you to navigate through life – literally or metaphorically. 

For Hartigan, Colony was also a turning point. In an essay about the work, well known Auckland based curator, art historian and writer Linda Tyler writes “Challenged by Art Collection curator Michael Dunn to make his best work for the Engineering atrium in 2002, Elam-graduate Paul Hartigan surpassed his earlier, multicoloured forays into neon."(1)

Surpass he did. Comprised of 100 individual tubes and 130 lineal metres of vermillion coloured glass filled with neon, each piece was installed by Paul himself. Of course there was a technical team, but Hartigan was hands on and involved every step of the way. In fact, just a few weeks ago the work was undergoing routine maintenance, and Paul was there.

In recent years I have had the pleasure of spending many wonderful hours sitting at Snake Studios, talking to Paul about art. If we’re feeling adventurous, and in need of a caffeine hit, we head across the road for a Piccolo (Paul’s preferred coffee) at Postal Service Grey Lynn. I have learned more about neon, and the precise science and engineering that goes into creating and making his brilliant genre bending works than I thought possible to know. Neon for example is a noble gas which is naturally red. The colour variations that many of us call neon signs are not necessarily pure neon at all. These other colours – blue, pink, green etc, result from the introduction of other gases and chemical compounds (argon, helium or mercury for example), and charging them with electricity. The reaction that occurs within the glass tubes (a reaction that can and does go wrong from time to time) is what produces the rainbow of colours. For Paul, a precise and exacting purist and one of the only true Neon artists in Aotearoa New Zealand, the colour of Colony is critical to its meaning: “I chose neon for its vital living flame quality, neon gas creates our red sky sunsets during days end.” As with any radiant light work, it takes on unique and distinct qualities depending on the time of day it is viewed, and perhaps is at its most potent once the sun goes down. 

Naturally, I shared my story about the impact his work had on me as an undergraduate. I told Paul how I would walk up and sit in front of it, or beneath it, trying to decipher each of the seemingly random gestural marks that even then I knew were anything but random. To this day, I stop my car shy of the traffic lights so I can gaze out my car window, through the glass Engineering building façade and be warmed by Colony’s neon glow. 

For Paul, my story and my relationship with his work (no doubt one of many such stories about this now iconic artwork) was exactly what he hoped for when he created it. "My objective with public works is to create a symbiotic relationship between the architectural platform and my neon drawing upon it, these two elements are always integrated to become one cohesive entity." I would take this one step further. Hartigan has created not only one cohesive entity, but a touchpoint that Aucklanders refer back to and extrapolate from as they go about their lives. That’s the thing about art. Particularly public art. It takes on a life of its own and comes to hold so much meaning for so many people. It becomes symbolic of something so much greater than what it physically is. You may not be consciously aware of it, just as you’re not consciously aware of the stars above, but you know they are there, guiding your way. 

(1) Read Linda Tylers complete essay: https://artcollection.auckland.ac.nz/essay/69039