The Press, 27 September 1984 p.20
12 September – 21 October 1984
Don Driver is well known for his various assemblages made of discarded objects and other "non-art" materials. Ten wall hangings made of skins, pelts, coloured vinyls, fertiliser bags, pieces of railway tarpaulins and supended bale hooks will be put on display for this exhibition.
These works are strongly related to other works Driver has made using plastics of a brilliant colour. Driver chose to use skins as his medium due to them being readily available from the tanneries. The works are related to each other but also stand as pieces in their own right.
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Location:
Robert McDougall Art Gallery - main gallery -
Exhibition number:
328
Related
Exhibition
With Spirit: Don Driver A Retrospective
7 October 2000
A major retrospective of New Zealand's most significant assemblage artist.
Collection
Don Driver Energy Triad
Op + Pop 6 February – 19 June 2016
The New Plymouth-based Don Driver worked from the mid-1970s until the 1990s on sculptural assemblages made from found materials. Echoing the work of American pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose work Driver had experienced while visiting New York in 1965, Energy Triad makes assertive use of familiar, locally sourced items, placing pioneering farming tools alongside advertising and road signage, all with a meticulous eye to formal balance and arrangement.
Collection
Don Driver Painted Relief No. II
For the exhibition Untitled #1050 (25 November 2017 – 14 October 2018) this work was displayed with the following label: “I try to create tensions between colours, shapes, shadows and reflections to create simplicity and ambiguity. […] I don’t like my painting to be evocative but to be something to be looked at for itself. It is a combination of flat surfaces and colours just nestling against each other.”
—Don Driver, 1979
Collection
Don Driver Drum Process
The style of Drum Process is known as ‘assemblage’. This is a technique in which an artwork is assembled from found (pre-existing) objects, rather than being directly created through mark-making or carving. The ‘subject’ of the work is the arrangement and juxtaposition of colour, texture and shape. Assemblage first began in the early 20th century with such artists as Georges Braque (1882 -1963) and Pablo Picasso (1881 -1973). However, Don Driver’s work relates most strongly to the work of American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) and Jasper Johns (b.1930). Drum Process is a strong example of his distinctive brand of formal Abstraction, constructed from the everyday materials of popular New Zealand culture. Driver didn’t receive formal training in art but took night classes in woodwork, welding, drawing and pottery. He first began working as a sculptor in a Primitivist style and also exhibited paintings. It was in the early 1960s that he began to develop the assemblage style for which he is best known.