A year and a half ago we were offered a tan­tal­ising glimpse of the mod­el of the Weta Work­shop-designed Wel­ling­ton rugby sculp­ture, not­ing its resemb­lance to a pro­vin­cial juni­or rugby trophy, a knick-knack gift for a rugby-lov­ing uncle, and a vagina.

And then finally the full-size sculp­ture appeared, tucked away in Jack Ilott Green, that little park on the corner of Har­ris Street and Jer­vois Quay, ready to prove to RWC vis­it­ors that Wel­ling­ton cares about rugby 4 realz. What was the sculp­ture like up close? Was it as vagin­al as the mod­el sug­ges­ted? An invest­ig­a­tion was required.

From a distance

After the jump – vagi­nas, zom­bies, glad hands, and best laid plans.

Vagina

First of all, while it is less gashy than the mod­el of 18 months ago, it is still rather vagin­al. There’s no deny­ing that there’s a massive crack run­ning down the middle of it. I’m sure the design­er has an offi­cial explan­a­tion of what the crack sym­bol­ises, but non­ethe­less, it still looks like a vagina.

But is this a bad thing? When the world of sculp­ture is tra­di­tion­ally full of phal­lic sym­bols, why not evoke female gen­italia for a change? It helps soften the hard­core bloke-bloke-bloke vibe of the statue. Besides, a bunch of dudes run­ning after a little egg? Yeah.

Thighs

Thighs and hands

This is an odd part of the sculp­ture. It mixes quite a sol­id, 3D thigh with an almost flat thigh which in turn has a 3D hand on top of it. It’s like a film prop – designed to look good from a par­tic­u­lar angle, but it does­n’t quite work up close.

This is also the most homo­erot­ic part of the sculp­ture. Look at how close that thumb is to the bot­tom of flat­man’s shorts. And flat­man is col­lid­ing with the open groin of anoth­er play­er. Crikey!

Social­ist real­ism

Easter egg

Much has been made of the fact that the sculp­ture is in the style known as social­ist real­ism, which had its ori­gins in Soviet Rus­sia and was most com­monly seen in Com­mun­ist coun­tries.

With that in mind, the rugby sculp­ture could be seen as a type of pro­pa­ganda. This is how New Zea­l­and likes to see its rugby play­ers – burly, hard­work­ing men; team-play­ers; work­ing towards a com­mon goal; the best in the world. There is no room in this sculp­ture for a bloke who’s been lured over to France to play for a cap­it­al­ist pro team.

This sculp­ture rep­res­ents the ideal, no mat­ter how much of a gap there is between that and real­ity. And don’t you for­get it.

Zom­bie

Scenes from a zombie movie

When Weta do detail, they do it well. Check out the veins, the bind­ing tape, the muscle bulges – and, hey, what’s that in top guy’s pants, eh?

Though it does kind of resemble a scene from a zom­bie movie. Hey, there’s an idea – Suzie the Zom­bie wait­ress sets her team of zom­bie rugby play­ers on the All Blacks, and the boys in black have to fight them off In Time For The Rugby World Cup.

Really?

Wellington, see, there's the Beehive

This is the worst part of the sculp­ture. See, it’s not just a rugby sculp­ture, it’s a Wel­ling­ton rugby sculp­ture. And because this is art and art is sym­bol­ic, the Wel­ling­ton loc­a­tion must be sym­bol­ised.

So how do we do that? With a miser­able little city­scape, includ­ing the Bee­hive. And then you get to call it “site spe­cif­ic” because it’s about Wel­ling­ton, and is loc­ated in Wel­ling­ton.

The weird thing is, as Weta’s web­site explains, the Wel­ling­ton loc­a­tion is already sym­bol­ised by the crash­ing waves along the bot­tom, indic­at­ing the Tas­man Sea and Pacific Ocean com­ing togeth­er in Cook Strait.

It’s hard to tell, but it looks like the city­scape was­n’t even part of the ori­gin­al design. It’s like some man­ager looked at it and said, “Yeah, but we need some­thing that says ‘Abso­lutely, pos­it­ively Wel­ling­ton!’ Why don’t you put the Bee­hive on it?”

For all the atten­tion and detail put into the heav­ing, thrust­ing, sweat­ing rugby play­ers, it seems odd that Weta would, er, drop the ball on this detail. It looks like some­thing that was tacked on near the end of the design, nev­er developed bey­ond an ini­tial sketch.

So there it is

The sculp­ture is there, to be seen by passing traffic and ped­es­tri­ans. In June, the Dom­Post repor­ted Richard Taylor as say­ing the sculp­ture “was designed so people could sit on it, and he hoped chil­dren would climb on its curves,” and indeed it has a very invit­ing shape. Except now when you vis­it it, this is what sur­rounds the sculp­ture:

What you can't do