Exhibitions
Events
On display
Tomorrow Never Knows
Carl Sydow Around 1971. Perspex, hose. Sydow family collection
Talk
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Carl Sydow was a leading light in New Zealand art of the 1960s and 70s—until tragedy struck. Curator Peter Vangioni discusses and illustrates his work and life.
Carl Sydow was one of a bright new generation of New Zealand sculptors who came to the fore during the 1960s and 70s, alongside John Panting, Stephen Furlonger and Leon Narbey. These artists rejected traditional sculptural materials and processes, choosing instead plastics, fibreglass and welded steel. Sydow’s works include sheets of zinc suspended on springs that shimmer when they move, as well as colourful garden hoses threaded through a sheet of Perspex.
Tragically, Sydow’s life was cut short in 1975 aged thirty-five. At the time, his career was in full flight and he was viewed by many as one of New Zealand’s leading sculptors. Tomorrow Never Knows focuses on the playful, up-tempo works produced in the last five years of the artist’s life and includes several sculptures from the Gallery’s collection alongside suites of his op-inspired drawings.
Related reading: Talk
Exhibition
Sydow: Tomorrow Never Knows
23 July 2017
1960s London set the scene for Carl Sydow’s playful, op-inspired sculptures.
Collection
Carl Sydow Meander I
As the title suggests, Meander I is a playful meandering line that appears to be moving in space and time. The hoses that loop back and forth through a clear perspex frame evoke a sense of circularity and continuity. A precise relationship between drawing and sculpture is achieved through Carl Sydow’s structural investigation of interlacing shapes. Sydow’s unconventional approach to sculptural materials and the depiction of form and line in space pre-empted the future direction of much contemporary sculpture in New Zealand. Carl Sydow attended the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts from 1959 –1961 and completed an Honours course in Sculpture at University of Auckland in 1963. He also gained a Diploma in Fine Arts at Auckland Teachers’ College in 1962. Between 1964 and 1966 Sydow visited England on a QEII Arts Council Grant and worked in the studios of the Royal College of Art.