30 November 1984 Students get creative with college sculpture

Students at Lincoln University College of Agriculture on Canterbury Plains in New Zealand's South Island didn't like a steel sculpture that had been erected on the campus so they decided to build one of their own.

They scoured farm sheds and workshops throughout the district around the college for scraps of old farm machinery and equipment, and welded the scrap together to create their own sculpture.

About two o'clock one morning they hauled their two-metre high, 250 kg collection of crankshafts, horse shoes, wire strainers, rollers, barbed wire, pipes, wheel hubs, hooks and a tractor safety frame, a milk can, a cistern ball and a tap from the workshop to the forecourt of the Registry, main building on the campus.

They switched the college sculpture for theirs, and when students and staff arrived for work they found the heap of junk on the forecourt.

Many preferred the student sculpture to the original, and signed a petition asking college authorities to keep it on campus.

College authorities came up with the ultimatum : let us have the original back and we'll find a place for the student sculpture.

Next day the original was back in place, and the scrap metal had been hauled off to the workshop for sandblasting and rust-proofing.

PHOTOS SHOW : The scrap-metal sculpture on display on the lawn in ;front of the college library ; and Ivey Hall, the original college built in traditional style, with the sculpture in the foreground.