Aputa ki Wairau and Hine-te-Iwaiwa by Warren Warbrick (Rangitāne), 2025

Source & image credits:

RNZ News | Te Ahu a Turanga: The story behind the art on New Zealand's newest highway, RNZ | Groundbreaking storytelling with a sculpture park you can drive through and The Post | The art that weaves links along the Manawatū-Tararua highway

"The new Te Ahu a Turanga Highway crossing the Ruahine Ranges is bookmarked on both ends by mahi toi (artwork), by two prominent Māori artists.

It replaces the old State Highway 3 through the Manawatū Gorge which closed in 2017 due to slips.

Tohunga Toi Warren Warbrick (Rangitāne) was one of three artists who worked on the project.

He said it was good to see his work go from drawings on paper to computer models to finally seeing it become a reality.

The overarching concept for all the art pieces along the road was 'he aho tangata - the human threads that bind us.'

On the Ashhurst end of the new highway stands one of Warbrick's sculptures made of a concrete base named Aputa ki Wairau and a metal structure named Hine-te-Iwaiwa.

Warbrick said the metal structure represents a turuturu, or weaving peg, whose 'thread' connects with the roundabout on the other side of the highway near Woodville.

"Each of the roundabouts, although they are not created to look like turuturu but they are symbolic of it, so when you have two turuturu you have a line that stretches between the two that is referred to as the aho, or the sacred thread... So what we are looking at is the idea of the roundabouts being the turuturu and the road being that sacred thread."

Read about Sandy Adsett's sculpture, Poutahu, at the Woodville end of Te Ahu a Turanga Highway.