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[Paul Dibble with 'Concrete in the Garden' installation]

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Description: This image was taken for a story that ran in The Manawatū Evening Standard on 9 November 1981, titled 'Concrete in the Garden.' It describes the installation of the same name by the Palmerston North artist Paul Dibble (1943-2023) that was on view at the Manawatū Art Gallery.

The impetus for Dibble’s installation was his dislike of the recently-constructed PNCC Civic Administration Building and what he considered the oppressive heaviness of its brutalist concrete form. Instead, his art work “recreated a light fragile space using thin metal rods” which established “the limits of his ‘garden’ and convey that all-important lightness – in an abstract way”. Wax figures recline on strips of artificial grass, while brightly-coloured, sheet-metal parrots are perched on the metal rods. Dibble had weighted the parrots with lead-filled beer bottle tops, which meant that the movement of visitors to the gallery caused the birds to sway gently, animating the space.