Silent Sentry (Tuahine Point Lighthouse)

• 710 x 1130mm
• Acrylic, newsprint and compressed charcoal on board in recycled cedar window frame
• 2020
• $4100

Tuahine Point Lighthouse, built in 1911, was the third lighthouse built on the point in Gisborne. The first burnt down in 1905, the second collapsed due to cliff erosion in 1909 and this current lighthouse (built on a rock in the ocean just out from the point), although derelict still stands today. The architectural drawings related to this lighthouse are believed to have been destroyed in the Hope Gibbons archival fire of 1952. My drawings were produced from looking back at old newspaper records which included the dimensions of the lighthouse in feet, which I then coverted into metrics! Etched in black are elements of the lighthouse that no longer exist while a detailed diagram includes the biometrics of the NZ red-billed gull, Tarāpunga, a declining species of native seagull.