Books and videos about the life and work of Len Lye.

 

Roger Horrocks

 

 

This book tells for the first time the story of an extraordinary New Zealander, a brilliant artist with an international career who never lost the informality, the energy, the independence of spirit of his South Pacific origins.

 

Len Lye began as an unsettled working-class kid with limited prospects and became a leading modernist artist in London and New York. Roger Horrocks's exhaustive study of Lye has taken many years and is based on interviews with many of those close to the artist as well as on voluminous documentary sources. In recounting a fascinating life he conveys at every turn Lye's vitality, charm, originality and enormous talent. The book explores Lye's activity in film, sculpture, painting, music and writing and his engagement with the leading movements of twentieth-century art. It will unquestionably place Lye alongside Mansfield and Hodgkins as a great New Zealand expatriate artist. Generous illustrations give striking examples of Lye's art and a vivid sense of the man and his world.

 

Roger Horrocks is the Head of the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of Auckland and was Lye's assistant late in his life. He has been very actively involved in New Zealand's growing film and television industries, serving on NZ on Air and other funding agencies.

 

ISBN 1 86940 247 2, 240 x 170mm, 460p, paperback, illustrations, $49.95, May 2001

Flip and Two Twisters
(46', 16 mm and SP Betacam).

 

A documentary about Len Lye, the great film maker and kinetic sculptor. This dynamic artist spent his life developing a highly original 'art of motion'. Flip and Two Twisters explores Lye's career and ideas with the help of newly discovered historical footage of the artist. It includes some great examples of Lye's film making, and some spectacular camera work (by Leon Narbey) of his sculptures in motion, including the wild rhythms of Flip and Two Twisters. The film also chronicles recent attempts to realise Lye's plans for giant versions of his sculpture. By award winning director of Pleasures and Dangers and Act of Murder, this film is a journey through the world of an extraordinary artist, Len Lye.

 

Director and writer: Shirley Horrocks
Producers: Robin Laing & Shirley Horrocks
Camera: Leon Narbey
Sound: Dave Hurley
Editor: Bill Toepfer
Consultant: Evan Webb
Music:Jonathan Besser & Ann McMillan

 

A Point of View Production made with the assistance of NZ on Air for TVNZ (Work of Art series) With thanks to the Len Lye Foundation, Technic Group Ltd, and the Arts Council. Distributed by the New Zealand Film Commission. © 1995, Point of View Productions, PO Box 78084 Auckland New Zealand

 

 

Doodlin': Impressions of Len Lye
(50', VHS, 1987, UK/NZ)

 

This outstanding documentary explores the life and career of Len Lye. Doodlin' is directed and produced by Keith Griffiths, one of the most innovative British film makers, known for his many art documentaries and his work with the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer.

Lye pioneered 'direct film', a new way of making films without a camera by painting, scratching and printing images directly on to celluloid. Doodlin' includes many examples of his work- from his first film Tusalava in 1929, through the popular films he made for John Grierson's GPO Film Unit in England, to masterpieces of direct animation such as Free Radicals and Particles in Space in 1979. It also explores Lye's highly original ideas about film making and kinetic sculpture, his belief that the best art is inspired by the unconscious or "Old Brain", and his use of doodling to uncover new kinds of imagery.

 

Lye's unique art and personality are explored in lively interviews with the artist's wife Ann Lye, film maker Stan Brakhage, composer Jack Ellitt, artist Ray Thorburn, editor Paul Barnes, biographer Roger Horrocks, and John Matthews the engineer who helped Lye to create his steel kinetic sculptures. Doodlin' also reveals the importance of Lye's early years in New Zealand, Australia and Samoa and shows some of the landscapes that influenced him.

 

Produced and Directed by: Keith Griffiths
Camera: Richard Blic & Ron Orders
Sound: Arpad Bondy & Brian Shennan
Sound Mix: Nigel Edwards
Editor: Larry Sider
Consultant: David Curtis
Associate Director: Ali Duffey
Executive Producer: Peter Sainsbury

 

© Koninck and Energy International in association with Channel 4. Distributed by the Len Lye Foundation. The Len Lye Foundation is supported by Technic Group Ltd. This video is intended for home use, research and study only. It may not be used for other purposes, copied or hired, loaned or shown in public without permission of the copyright owner.