View West Taranaki
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Bill Culbert
b.1935
Title
View West Taranaki
Details
Production Date | 2008 |
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Collection(s) | Collection Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth. Acquired with assistance from the Govett-Brewster Foundation. |
Accession Number | 2008/18 |
Media | suitcases, acrylic sheet, fluorescent lights, theatrical gels, paint, electrical cabling |
Measurements | variable |
About
Bill Culbert produced West View Taranaki for his exhibition Groundworks, held at the Govett-Brewster in 2008. In this work, Culbert manipulates artificial light in a floor-based work to suggest and refer to the directional fall, or the emanating glow, of natural light.
Chrominance is the colour of light, while luminance is the intensity of light. In this work, Culbert plays with both chrominance and luminance as he evokes the particular hues of light that flood the early evening sky in Taranaki during autumn. Specifically, the work references the transitional time between dusk and sunset when the sun disappears over the Tasman Sea to the west.
The work explores the subtle nuances of visual perception: Culbert evoked this visual encounter via coloured theatrical gels, meticulously selected for their hue, that are embedded in re-furbished Samsonite-style hard suitcases. Each of the twenty-one bespoke suitcases is fitted with a fluorescent tube as a source of light. The clutch of luminous suitcases suggests a swathe of wayward television screens, each fixed aberrantly in single-colour mode. The work may suggest relentless travel, an almost defunct technology of mass entertainment, or even the evanescent quality of light cast from the sun at nightfall.
View West Taranaki registers Culbert’s fascination with reactivating objects of the everyday alongside an acute interest in the phenomenological encounter with light. The work re-energises the materials of place and the manipulation of light in the atmosphere to cast new visual poetry.
— Excerpt from Rhana Devenport, ‘Bill Culbert: Groundworks: A Light Art,’ in Bill Culbert: Groundworks, 2013. Adapted for Collection Online, 2023.