Opened Stone

Both dramatic and deceptively simple, this sculpture was designed and hand-carved by Japanese artist Hiroaki Ueda in 1971 and stood for more than three decades in the forecourt of Auckland Art Gallery Toi ō Tamaki. Ueda was one of five Pacific Rim artists commissioned by the New Zealand Society of Sculptors & Painters to create a work for the International Sculpture Symposium, which was held in Auckland in 1971. The artists were each allocated a prominent site and the artworks were then gifted to the city in commemoration of its centenary.

Opened Stone was the most traditional of the works created for the symposium; it was chipped and shaped by the artist and his assistant, Bronwen Muir (at the time a student at Elam School of Fine Arts), with hand tools from a ten-tonne slab of imported red African granite. Ueda took inspiration from the Shinto tradition of ceremonial and memorial sculptures, which are usually made of blocks stacked on top of each other. The colour and simple form of the sculpture is like a Shinto prayer gate (torii), which in Japanese tradition marks the entrance to a Shinto shrine, or the passage to a sacred space.

Opened Stone was relocated in 2016 to a permanent site in Manukau Domain, Lynfield, with views of the Manukau harbour and coastal bush below.