Bill Culbert: Groundworks
8 March – 18 May 2008
Eminent New Zealand artist Bill Culbert leads audiences through an exploration of light, shadows and perception in a
new exhibition Groundworks at New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery from 8 March to 18 May 2008.
This occasion marks the first significant presentation of Culbert’s work in this country since the 1997 touring
exhibition Lightworks and presents three large-scale installations to New Zealand audiences for the first time. Two of
these installations will be created especially for Groundworks.
Culbert’s installations see the transformation of domestic debris into poetic vehicles for ideas and states of being.
Working with materials such as light bulbs, fluorescent tubes, plastic bottles, lampshades and suitcases, Culbert
explores the dynamic interplay between light and shadow, between luminescence, space and visual perception.
Govett-Brewster Director and exhibition curator Rhana Devenport describes Culbert as “a conjurer of light”.
“Deftly articulated, his installations harness ordinary light sources and exist as reminders of the power of material
transience and immaterial imagination,“ she says.
The two new works are View West Taranaki and Flat Lighthouse. View West Taranaki, employees a collection of recycled
Samsonite-style suitcases, sourced through a nationwide appeal, and electric lighting. Flat Lighthouse, uses demolition
materials and devices concerned with daylight within a building, which will be lit by interior artificial lighting.
Flotsam 1992, first exhibited in Europe and last year at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, sees a slick of
discarded plastic bottles and fluorescent lights across the gallery floor.
Culbert began working with light as a medium in the late 1960s. Trained as a painter, he saw it as a way of extending
beyond the constraints of a canvas. Since this time, through photography and installation Culbert’s extensive body of
work has offered a consistent exploration of light and shadow in a poetic and personal way.
Devenport says, “Bill Culbert has been an ever-present source of inspiration to generations of artists in New Zealand,
England and France“.
Born in Port Chamers, Otago, Culbert has lived between London and the South of France for over fifty years. He has
exhibited widely in Europe, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand often working in vast scale. Within New Zealand his works
include the neon piece SkyBlue 2006 in Wellington’s Post Office Square and a recent collaboration with Ralph Hotere,
Void 2006, which inhabits a multi-storey space within Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington.
This exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of public events including talks by Culbert himself, writer and
critic Ian Wedde, and a sound performance by artist Andrew Clifford responding to these new works. A catalogue will be
forthcoming.
Also showing:
Francis Upritchard: New Zealand Artist in Residence
Rainwob I
1 March – 18 May 2008
Jayce Salloum: International Artist in Residence
everything and nothing and other works from the ongoing project ‘untitled’, and recent fragments/works
8 March – 25 May 2008
Len Lye: A portrait gallery
8 March – 18 May 2008
ENDS