The Len Lye Centre
22 Jun 2015 - by Anna McLaren & Kelly Loney
NEW
ZEALAND'S FOREMOST CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM
Aotearoa New Zealand is about to open the doors to its first and only museum of
contemporary art. The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, with its
curved exterior walls of mirror-like stainless steel, will be the country’s
first example of destination architecture linked to contemporary art.
The latest addition to the
Govett-Brewster – the Len Lye Centre – is New Zealand’s first institution
dedicated to a single artist, the pioneering filmmaker and kinetic sculptor,
Len Lye.
Set in
the coastal city of New Plymouth, overlooked by the majestic Mount Taranaki on
the west coast of the North Island, the centre is due to open on 25 July, 2015.
GOVETT-BREWSTER
AND LEN LYE
The Govett-Brewster was founded by a gift to the city of New Plymouth, from one
of its greatest ‘Friends’ Monica Brewster. A globetrotter
before the age of air travel, Monica Brewster envisaged an art museum for her
hometown that would be an international beacon for the art and ideas of the
current day – the sort she had become familiar with on her global travels.
The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
continues in the legacy of Monica Brewster by taking on and presenting the most
provocative, audacious and confident works of art in the global arts landscape.
Len Lye (1901-1980) exhibited at
the Govett-Brewster in 1977 and falling in love with the energy and landscape
of New Plymouth, he chose the contemporary art museum to be the home of Len Lye. Just months before his
death in 1980, Lye established the Len Lye Foundation to continue his artistic vision, gifting his entire collection of more than 18,000 items to be cared for by the Govett-Brewster.
THE LEN
LYE CENTRE
‘Great architecture goes fifty-fifty with great art’ LEN LYE 1964
The
Len Lye Centre building, adjoining the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, is an
example of innovative thinking in both engineering and architecture.
The
external stainless steel façade echoes the artist’s use of the metal in many of
his kinetic sculptures, and the futuristic style of the building acts as a
counterfoil to the neighbouring Govett-Brewster’s more traditional lines.
The
architects are Pattersons, one of New Zealand’s most internationally recognised
architectural firms.
A temple for art, the space creates a sensory experience of light that Len’s
legacy inspires.
The
new building – the Len Lye Centre – will feature Lye’s work in kinetic
sculpture, film, painting, drawing, photography, batik and writing, as well as
related work by contemporary and historical artists.
The
Centre also houses a state-of-the-art 62-seat cinema – a welcoming environment
for audiences to experience Len Lye’s films, local and international cinema,
arthouse and experimental films, and regular film festival programming.
LEN LYE
– THE ARTIST
A visionary
New Zealander, an inspirational artist, a pioneer of film; Len Lye is one of
the most important and influential artists to emerge from New Zealand.
Lye’s iconic 45-metre kinetic
sculpture Wind Wand sways gently on
New Plymouth's Coastal Walkway. The Wind
Wand that glows red at night, is the first large outdoor sculpture to be
built posthumously from his plans and drawings. And plans are afoot to install a group of six
4.5-metre tall Wind Wands at New Plymouth’s East End beach in time for
the opening of the Len Lye Centre in July 2015.
OPENING
EXHIBITIONS
One of the Len Lye Centre’s opening exhibitions is Len Lye: Four Fountains in the new Large Works Gallery. An audience
favourite, the gentle, swaying Fountain is among the earliest of Lye’s kinetic
sculptures – a bundle of rotating stainless steel rods that twist, flex and
shimmer under the gallery’s lights. The exhibition presents four variations of Fountain,
including a new member of the family of works, the 8-metre tall version
engineered by the Len Lye Foundation from Lye’s extensive archive of notes and
designs.
As a filmmaker Len Lye described cinema as ‘movement and light’.
In 1977 he brought sculpture into the same frame with his kinetic masterpiece, Trilogy
(A Flip and Two Twisters) – a frenzy of movement and light designed for the
Govett-Brewster’s highest gallery. The Len Lye Foundation is reconstructing Trilogy
so that it will be reinstated in the same place for the reopening of the
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Taking inspiration from the musical elements in Lye’s work, the
exhibition Len Lye’s Jam Session
presents the bounding steel of Universe,
the flashing energy of film, and the delicate sway of Grass – with music going hand-in-hand with the artist’s creations.
Opening in the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is Our Hearts of Darkness, an exhibition largely curated from the
treasure trove of the Govett-Brewster Collection. The show looks at codes of
violence in Aotearoa New Zealand culture as expressed through contemporary art.
Follow progress here: www.govettbrewster.com
