Pam McKelvey, ‘Song for a Future’ (1998), Dunedin City Library, CBD, Ōtepoti Dunedin

Images: Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand, 2021

Dunedin Public Libraries

Dunedin City Council

Pam McKelvey

Ground Floor Children's balcony, Dunedin City Library, 230 Moray Place, CBD, Ōtepoti Dunedin

Song for a Future

Pam McKelvey was born in Rotorua and studied at the University of Canterbury. School of Fine Art, specialising in metal sculpture. Subsequently she developed an interest stone, working with West Coast jade carver, Bill Mathieson. Her early exhibitions were of jewellery-scale works. 

Returning to making larger pieces, in 2000 McKelvey represented Aotearoa at a Korean stone-carving symposium which remembered the Korean War of the 1950s. In 2008 she competed in the Heartland Sculpture Challenge, again producing large scale works.

As well as being a sculptor in her own right she has been an active member of the Otago Sculpture Trust since 2004 and teacher at Logan Park High School, Dunedin.