Bebop by Bill Culbert is a large suspended sculpture made from fluorescent light tubes, furniture and wires which hangs above the grand staircase in the foyer of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. It was made in 2013 and purchased in 2014 as one of the ‘Five Great Works’ acquired to mark each year that the Gallery building was closed after the 2010–11 Canterbury earthquakes.

The first impression of Bebop when you enter the Gallery’s foyer is spectacular. A chaotic procession of colourful Formica-and-chrome chairs and tables suspended upside down at various angles, the work hangs from the soaring 14.4-metre high ceiling and runs the length of the white marble staircase below. Multiple fluorescent tubes of white light pierce through each piece of furniture. The sculpture fills the central staircase space with a bright white light that reflects softly off the stairs. This is very different from the work’s original setting: the entrance hall to the church of Santa Maria della Pietà at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

As you climb the staircase, the first pieces of jauntily pitched and tilting furniture suspended high above are white with silvery metal legs and exposed wooden underbellies. Next come sets in loud and shiny retro colours: blue, then green, yellow, red and finally another yellow at the top of the stairs. At 19 metres long, Bebop spans the length of the grand staircase. The sculpture has been described as something between a riotous chandelier and an art tornado. The artist himself called it “a vortex of useable things that are out of place”.

Bill Culbert was an important Aotearoa New Zealand artist who was born in 1935 in Port Chalmers just outside Ōtepoti Dunedin. After studying at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts in Ōtautahi Christchurch, he received a National Gallery scholarship to study painting at the Royal College of Art in London. He is known for his use of light in painting, photography and sculpture, and for repurposing found or second-hand materials.

Culbert bought the furniture for Bebop in second-hand shops and online marketplaces from his home in the South of France. The title of the work came from one of the receipts, which listed the tables and chairs as “bebop”. A type of jazz that became popular in the 1940s, bebop is all about improvisation – repurposing and rearranging musical phrases to create something new and exciting. And that is just what Culbert has done in this sculpture, producing a work that is jumbled and joyful, just like the music it is named after.