19 Jun 2022

Sara Hughes takes her art to the street

From Standing Room Only, 12:43 pm on 19 June 2022

Several years after feeling unsafe while at a notorious bus shelter in Tauranga, artist Sara Hughes is transforming it into a brightly coloured and illuminated work of art.

It will be suspended above the Willow Street bus shelter, and wrapped around the wall and front of Tauranga Art Gallery to Wharf Street creating a corridor that bathes those walking through it in coloured light. 

The artwork's big, covering about  260 square metres of glass panels.  

It's called Midnight Sun, referring to times when the sun remains visible through the night at the Poles - just as the artwork will be illuminated 24/7.

Sara is a past winner of the Wallace Art Award.  She also made her name creating public art on a grand scale.  She built the largest integrated public art work in Aotearoa when she covered all four sides of the New Zealand International Convention Centre in Auckland.

But it's her new Tauranga public art work that Lynn Freeman first asks her about.

Midnight Sun will be unveiled on the 21st of June at the Willow Street bus shelter in Tauranga.