Bill Culbert made Bebop for a corridor in an old church in Venice, Santa Maria della Pietà, when he represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2013. He found the colourful tables and chairs in flea markets and at attic sales near his studio in the south of France. The title of the work comes from one of the tables.

“We were collecting one of the Formica dining sets from a family in Caromb, a small town just south of Mont Ventoux. They brought it with them from Oran in Algeria when they moved to France decades ago, and they still had the receipt with the name of the furniture – Bebop! It was perfect. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie. The dancing was phenomenal. It really is about energy, noise… A very noisy work in a very silent space.”

Bebop is a style of jazz that developed in the early 1940s. It is characterised by its fast tempo and improvisation, where solos float free over the underlying structure of the song. Culbert's Bebop floats over the Gallery’s stairs, a wild orchestration of furniture pierced by bars of white light.

Bill Culbert left New Zealand in 1957 with a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art. He later split his time between London and the Vaucluse, with annual trips back to New Zealand. From the later 1960s he made installations using light and discarded objects – bottles, suitcases, jars, tables and chairs – exploring the ways that light and shadow transform the way we see the everyday world.

He described Bebop as “a vortex of useable things that are out of place.” The Formica and chrome surfaces reflect light, the tumbling furniture creating a sense of movement and energy that travels the length of the work. Culbert called it kaleidoscopic: “as if they are on their way somewhere but not knowing where they're going.”

Leo Bensemann made this portrait when he and Rita Angus were neighbours. The friends occupied adjacent studio flats in a Cambridge Terrace house here in Ōtautahi Christchurch owned by the painter Sydney Lough Thompson, Bensemann sharing his with Lawrence Baigent. They all used the same kitchen and bathroom, and often entertained together. As artists, it was a creative and stimulating environment. “Both our studio doors were thrown open”, Baigent recalled. “Doors were never locked or shut.” Bensemann and Angus frequently made portraits of each other – some flamboyant, others more introspective, like this one. They are fascinating records of two strong personalities and their complex friendship.

(Dear Shurrie: Francis Shurrock and his contemporaries, 8 March – 13 July 2025)