Shane Woolridge’s well-known schist and slate work, Missing Link, has been bought by a couple based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who own three of his smaller works.
Mr Woolridge will fly to Scotland in March to install the sculpture, which has already been shipped over. It is understood it sold for about $50,000.
Mr Woolridge sculpted the 2.3-metre-high work, based on a split chain link, in 2010.
He has since exhibited it around Central Otago.
In 2014, thanks to an anonymous benefactor, he made a larger, 3.25m- high version, Thru Link to Peak, for the Queenstown Trails Trust, which installed it near a Kelvin Peninsula trail.
Mr Woolridge said: ‘‘I always promised my wife that if I took my art seriously, one day we would be able to travel with it, so this our first chance.’’
Given he is from England, he said there was irony in the sculpture heading to the United Kingdom because it incorporates two pieces of Welsh slate, which was going home.
Mr Woolridge and Queenstown landscape architect Paddy Baxter, of Baxter Design Group, have won a competition to design a national memorial to famous pacifist Archibald Baxter, of Dunedin, and all other New Zealand conscientious objectors, to be installed in Dunedin.
- Philip Chandler
