Thanks for becoming a Friend of Len. We hope you will enjoy this first issue of our quarterly newsletter about Len Lye and Len Lye events around the world.     

You’ll find:
Current exhibitions that include Len Lye's work
Upcoming events
Recent events
Len Lye projects
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Did you know?

Double harmonic: Len Lye & Tony Nicholls Until 25 March 2007
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
This exhibition explores sound and movement composition across 50 years, pairing Len Lye’s thunderous works with contemporary sound-driven kinetic sculptures by the New Plymouth-born artist, Tony Nicholls. Curated by Tyler Cann. Free entry

Double harmonic: Len Lye & Tony Nicholls

Len Lye film screening
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
Sunday 18 March 2.00pm
This programme of Len Lye films was featured at the opening of the New Zealand Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Free entry

Double harmonic exhibition tour
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
Sunday 25 March 2.00pm
Join Len Lye Curator Tyler Cann for a last look at the exhibition Double harmonic: Len Lye & Tony Nicholls. Free entry

Len Lye at the Auckland Festival 2007
Tahaki reserve, Mt Eden, Auckland
Sunday 18 March 8.00pm
(Rain date Monday 19 March)
Part of the Auckland Festival AK07, this outdoor screening features a programme of Len Lye films. Highlights include Full fathom five 1935 (revised 1953), Lye’s first attempt at painting directly onto the film strip. The film’s abstract images accompany passages from the song of Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, voiced by British actor John Gielguld. Free entry

Len Lye at the Auckland Festival

An artist for now

Len Lye’s work was shown far and wide in 2006, with his films appearing in exhibitions from Paris to São Paulo.

Following his films’ appearance in the exhibition Visual music at Los Angeles’ MOCA in 2005, Lye’s work returned to the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of the major exhibition Le mouvement des images, which opened in April 2006. Visitors game for a sleepless night could attend Nuit Blanche, an event at the Pompidou where they heard a discussion of Lye’s 1957 film Rhythm after midnight.

Latin America’s oldest and most significant international art exhibition, the Bienal de São Paulo, also featured an ambitious programme of Lye’s films. With the support of the biennale, Tyler Cann, Len Lye Curator, introduced an international audience to the artist with a special lecture translated into Portuguese.

Len Lye film search

In 2006 the Len Lye Foundation, New Zealand Film Archive and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery launched the Len Lye Film Search.  The aim of this project is to find out what Lye film material exists elsewhere in the world, and to build up a comprehensive catalogue of his film work. Independent archivist Sarah Davy performed the first phase of this search in the UK and Europe. Not including the British Film Institute’s substantial holdings, a canvas of European film archives uncovered 60 film prints in 13 archives ranging in location from Serbia to Sweden. Phase two of this project is now underway.

40 Legends of New Zealand Design

A roll-call of who’s who in New Zealand design features Lye’s work in several media. Douglas Lloyd Jenkins’ 40 Legends of New Zealand Design brings together profiles of twentieth century designers who were pioneers in the development of New Zealand style.

Lloyd Jenkins’ decision to include Len Lye was based partly on the artist’s work with textiles, he noted that while people often think of Lye in relation to his sculpture or film, his textiles are equally significant.

“What’s interesting about Len Lye is his complexity,” Lloyd Jenkins says, “He is central to the development of New Zealand art and should also be seen as instrumental to the development of New Zealand design.”

40 Legends of New Zealand Design is available from the Govett-Brewster Art and Design Shop.
NZ$40
E-mail: artanddesign@govettbrewster.com

Tiki   1922

As a young man, Lye was injured while working as a builder’s labourer in Wellington and took this time off to make a wood carving. Lye’s carving took the Maori hei-tiki as a point of departure, but transformed it in the manner of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska or Constantin Brancusi, two modernist sculptors he admired. The large head became a self-contained oval tilted to one side. Whereas a hei-tiki usually had large eyes, this piece featured narrow slits giving the head an overall feeling of dreamy repose. Rather than add a straight body with curved limbs, Lye made the whole of the trunk curve so that a series of rounded shapes ended in a curved leg. The back of a hei-tiki is usually flat, but Lye carved an almost naturalistic back, with one leg tucked behind the other and the arms crossed behind the head holding a leather cord.

Tiny as the carving was (about 6cm x 6cm), it illustrated the thorough way in which Lye was engaging with Cubism. The Cubism of Picasso and Braque involved a dialogue with African art, whereas Lye was engaging with Maori art. Though the hei-tiki is not a sacred object, Lye’s carving might today be seen as a misappropriation or too free a treatment of conventions. But in relation to the Pakeha (European New Zealand) tradition of art it was boldly innovative, based on a serious engagement with the formal aspects of both Maori art and European modernism. At this time (1922) it would have been difficult to find any other Pakeha artist who shared his interests.

—Prof. Roger Horrocks

Roger Horrocks’ Len Lye: a biography is available at the Govett-Brewster Art and Design Shop.
NZ$50
E-mail: artanddesign@govettbrewster.com

New Zealand artist jeweller Warrick Freeman was commissioned by the Len Lye Foundation to create a silver brooch based on Lye's Tiki to commemorate the centenary of Lye's birth.

Len Lye was once deported from Samoa? 

Around 1924, Lye took an extended tour of the South Pacific, visiting Fiji, the Cook Islands, Tonga and finally Samoa. There, Lye found a job at a general store in Apia, where he befriended a young Samoan man named Solavao (or Sola i le Vao). Keen to experience a Samoan way of life, Lye accepted Solavao’s invitation to join him in his village. The young artist adopted Samoan dress, participated in the community, and was fascinated by Samoan siapo (tapa) cloth design. All this was enough for the New Zealand colonial administrator to assume he was involved with Samoan women, an offence worthy of deportation. Lye protested, saying, “Sir, you’re barking up several wrong trees. One, I’m not running around with Samoan girls, as much as I’d love to. Two, I’ve got people here to back up the statement that I am here with a definite study project: Samoan design.” Despite this, Lye was soon given a first-class passage to Sydney.