Len Lye
29 April 2002
Len Lye ― one of New Zealand's most inventive avant-garde artists ― is celebrated in a comprehensive exhibition that opens at the Queensland Art Gallery from noon Friday 17 May.
Lye, well known for his remarkable innovations from 1920s to 1980, was a unique personality and an artist whose ideology was 'exploration' and 'transformation' in both life and art.
Described as an artist for the twenty-first century, Len Lye was thought to be 'like a man from Mars who saw everything from a different viewpoint'.
Minister for the Arts, Matt Foley, said this exhibition raises the public profile and the many facets of Lye's creative persona as film-maker, kinetic sculptor, photographer, painter, theorist and writer.
'"Len Lye highlights the artist's role as an important player in the modernist developments of art and film in London in the late 1920s and in New York from the 1960s through to his death in 1980,' Mr Foley said.
'Len Lye' includes kinetic sculptures, photograms and films. It is the first major exploration of Lye's artistic achievements to be seen in Australia.
Lye's films, included in this exhibition, illustrate his resourcefulness and re-invention with experimental techniques such as painting celluloid and scratching film stock.
Photograms Lye produced in New York in the late 1940s, enigmatic portraits of friends and associates including artist Georgia O'Keefe and writer W.H. Auden, are also featured.
Queensland Art Gallery Director, Doug Hall, said Len Lye was fascinated by the experiential and in harnessing physical energy, 'life force' and motion.
'Len Lye' illustrates the artist's frequent use of the human figure as both a device and a metaphor.
Importantly this exhibition offers new research on Lye's inventions in photo-media and the influence early contact with Pacific art had on the development of his work.
'Len Lye' is intended to remain on view for the duration of another exhibition at the Gallery entitled 'Max Gimblett: The Language of Drawing'.
'The two exhibitions will enable viewers to explore the impact Lye had on the younger artist, also a New Zealand expatriate in New York, in terms of techniques and artistic philosophy,' Mr Hall said.
Len Lye is a joint exhibition between the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, supported by the Len Lye Foundation. The Len Lye Foundation is supported by Technix Group Ltd.
