I was looking over Wellington from the best view I knew. Up came the sun and the clouds were bowling along. Then it hit me: if movement is the important thing, why not keep it the thing, and really make objects move. Len Lye

The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is delighted to see the unveiling of Water Whirler on the Wellington Waterfront. Water Whirler is a kinetic sculpture conceived by Len Lye in the early 1960s and realised today by the Len Lye Foundation in partnership with the Wellington Sculpture Trust and Wellington Waterfront. I was looking over Wellington from the best view I knew. Up came the sun and the clouds were bowling along. Then it hit me: if movement is the important thing, why not keep it the thing, and really make objects move. Len Lye

The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is delighted to see the unveiling of Water Whirler on the Wellington Waterfront. Water Whirler is a kinetic sculpture conceived by Len Lye in the early 1960s and realised today by the Len Lye Foundation in partnership with the Wellington Sculpture Trust and Wellington Waterfront.This is the second Len Lye sculpture to be realised in a public space in New Zealand, the first being Wind Wand in New Plymouth.

Tyler Cann, Curator of the Len Lye Collection at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery says, "It is very exciting to see a sculpture envisaged by Lye on the Wellington waterfront. Just as New Plymouth's Wind Wand has become an icon for the city, I would hope Water Whirler becomes a much-loved Wellington landmark as well."

"Visitors to the waterfront, commuters and children playing in Frank Kitts Park will be treated to Water Whirler, a quivering, oscillating and revolving 12m fibreglass wand which sprays jets of water in all directions."

Born in Christchurch in 1901, Len Lye is arguably New Zealand's most widely-celebrated visual artist. His international reputation stands primarily on his achievements as an experimental film-maker and kinetic sculptor. It was in Wellington that Lye found his guiding artistic inspiration to create an art based on abstract movement.

In the 1960s Lye envisioned several sculptures that went beyond the technology available at the time. Lye once said "My work will be pretty good for the 21st Century. Why the 21st? Simply that there won't be the means until then to have what I want, which is enlarged versions of my work." He expressed the desire for these large-scale works to be built posthumously. Shortly before his death in 1980, Lye and his supporters created the Len Lye Foundation, to which the artist left his collection of work and the rights to them. This collection is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth under a deed agreement between the New Plymouth District Council and the Len Lye Foundation.

I was looking over Wellington from the best view I knew. Up came the sun and the clouds were bowling along. Then it hit me: if movement is the important thing, why not keep it the thing, and really make objects move. I had my idea - to compose movement as movement. It grew: I could change movement in actual motion as a cloud does - create a shape, compose its motion, and keep it going in a figure of motion.

-Len Lye