Exhibitions
Events
On display
Blade by Len Lye
Len Lye Blade 1998. Titanium, electric motor. Collection of John and Lynda Matthews, New Plymouth.
Art Bite
Past event
Meet under the stairs
Free
Join volunteer guide Diane Swain following the 12pm performance of Len Lye's Blade for a talk on this large kinetic sculpture.
Art Bites are 30-minute lunchtime presentations on a single work on display, presented by our staff, guides and guest speakers.
There's a new Art Bite to enjoy each Friday at 12.30pm.
Related reading: Free event
Exhibition
Len Lye: Stopped Short by Wonder
5 August – 26 November 2017
An exhibition inspired by a flash of light and a thunderclap.
Artist Profile
Len Lye's Learning Curve
One of the most dramatic aspects of the career of Len Lye (who was born in Christchurch in 1901 and died in Warwick, New York, in 1980) was his youthful search for information about the modernist revolution in art. This occurred throughout the early 1920s, when New Zealand was still (in Peter Tomory’s words) ‘a cultural wasteland’ and (in Eric McCormick’s) a ‘backwater of nineteenth-century civilisation.’
Commentary
Len Lye Works
The glancing body of a hooked swordfish; the shivering skin of a panicky horse; a shiny tin kicked in rage by a young boy outside the Cape Campbell lighthouse. This triptych of memories was the inspiration for avant-garde New Zealand sculptor, painter and film-maker Len Lye’s Blade (1972–4) – a vertical band of steel that curves, flexes, arches then hammers frenetically against a cork ball in a fury of light, sound and movement.
