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30/11/2012

Three exhibitions

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth

Open Window
Michael Parr and Blaine Western: soft frame

Curated by Meredith Robertshawe

Responding to and acting upon the Open Window gallery, Blaine Western and Michael Parr intervene and disrupt this architectural space. Taking the name Open Window to its literal end, the artists seek to re-construct our experiential understanding of ‘inside/outside’. Parr and Western’s process-oriented practice tests how potentials of architectural actions can alter our social encounters of everyday street and gallery environments.

Western and Parr have exhibited and published collaboratively through project space split/fountain and artist-run gallery Snake Pit in Auckland, as well as winning the 2012 National Contemporary Arts Award. Both artists graduated with Bachelors of Fine Arts (Hon.) from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2011, where Western is currently a Masters candidate.

This project is kindly supported by Metro GlassTech New Plymouth

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Len Lye
The New Yorker

Curated by Paul Brobbel, Assistant Curator Len Lye

This summer’s Len Lye exhibition at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Len Lye: The New Yorker, explores Lye’s early years in New York – between his arrival in 1944 and the emergence of his kinetic sculpture, or ‘tangibles’, in the early 1960s.

With an extensive look into the Len Lye Foundation collection and archives, Len Lye: The New Yorker considers Lye’s activity in this important but often overlooked period. A selection of both well known and seldom shown films will illustrate the artist’s ongoing engagement with abstract cinema, showcasing both Lye’s relentless technical innovation and a restlessness in searching for new media to pursue his interest in movement.

Lye’s early, tentative steps as a kinetic sculptor will be explored through several works representative of Tangible Motion Sculpture, Lye’s 1961 kinetic performance at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Between these familiar poles of the artist’s practice, the exhibition will consider many other aspects of Lye’s work, including rarely seen paintings, drawings, photograms, writings and personal objects.

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Singular Companions
Sculpture from the Collection

Sculptural form is paramount in this exhibition from the Govett-Brewster Collection.

Works are cast, assembled, recycled, woven, thrown, carved, welded, hand-formed or illuminated.

Grouped as new companions in five gallery spaces, the works explore the containment of memory, measure, the mapping of terrestrial journeys, the body and abstraction alongside interplays with domestic ciphers, social customs, illusion and weightlessness.

Works are either new to the Collection or have not been exhibited at the Govett-Brewster for many years.

The New Zealand and international artists in Singular Companions employ a wide variety of materials in their work from drift nets, beeswax and timber to copper, ceramic, neon, marble, fibreglass, re-purposed plastic bottles and sound.

The exhibition spans more than four decades of making and registers each artist's particular sculptural interests. These differ markedly, from the feminist concerns of Mary-Louise Browne to the environmental considerations of Andrew Drummond, from Filipe Tohi's complex patterned abstraction to the investigation of perception by Paul Hartigan and Neil Dawson. Recent additions to the collection by artists Lisa Reihana, Laurelle Pookamelya, Bill Culbert and Lauren Winstone are presented alongside important yet rarely seen works from our holdings.

Artists are:
Mary-Louise Browne
Bill Culbert
Neil Dawson
Don Driver
Andrew Drummond
Karl Fritsch and Gavin Hipkins
Paul Hartigan
Christine Hellyar
John Ward Knox
Laurelle Pookamelya
Lisa Reihana
Peter Robinson
Filipe Tohi
Lauren Winstone
Yin Xiuzhen

Image: Len Lye Wind Wand 1960, Photograph Maurie Logie, Courtesy Len Lye Foundation

Press contact:
Kelly Loney tel +64 6 7596717 kellyl@govettbrewster.com

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
Corner of Queen and King Streets Private Bag 2025 New Plymouth 4310 Aotearoa New Zealand
Hours
10.00am – 5.00pm daily
Closed Christmas Day
Admission is free, although visitor donations enable the Gallery to ensure the ongoing provision of dynamic programmes.

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