Grey Lynn artist gets a head

The first time The Aucklander stumbled upon Rohan Wealleans' work was during another interview when we noticed a giant silver head wedged in his carport at his Grey Lynn home.

The photographer and I ventured to the open front door, only to be accosted by a booming voice on talkback radio that drowned out our persistent knocking.

Before giving up, nosiness prevailed and we sneaked a closer look at the chiselled giant. Peering up the hollow neck, we realised why the door hadn't been answered. Wealleans was inside the head, clad in pink stubbies, chipping away at layers of paint.

As it turns out, the head, a replica of the late actor Kevin Smith, will be displayed in a solo exhibition that also features a 2.5m replica of Craig Parker when he played a wizard in the TV series Legend of the Seeker and 48 paintings that tell the fantastical tale of a wizard's conception, an alien abduction, training and battles.

Wealleans, 34, says the head originally was a prop in the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess, and had apparently spent 10 years on the roof of someone's home before he bought it and reworked it.

Although he has a family connection to Smith, he says the work is not intended to comment on the actor's life. Smith had starred in Xena as Ares, and also in Hercules, the Legendary Journeys - hence the prop cast in his form. The gifted actor died 10 years ago after a fall in China where he was working on a movie.

"The head was for sale as an ex-prop. I'd wanted to make a pod-type work for a while. It wouldn't fit in my studio," he says of the estimated 300kg fibreglass and polystyrene creation, which occupied his carport for a year.

Similarly, the wizard had to be modified to fit in his studio before it could be worked on.

"I had to get Craig Parker cut up and an interlocking system built into his arms and things.

"The head is the wizard's hangout pad," he says of the interior, which eventually will be lined with sheep's wool and house a modified fortune-telling Bratz doll. "It's all quite luxurious when it's done."

And a little strange, but this is art.

Originally from Invercargill, Wealleans graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts and has been a full-time artist for 12 years. In that time he has exhibited in London, Shanghai, Italy, Brazil and throughout Australia and New Zealand.

He has been a recipient of a Wallace Art Award and taken a six-month residency in New York through the International Studio and Curatorial Programme.

His work is most recognisable for its phantasmagoric subject matter presented in the pocked, chiselled build-up of numerous layers of paint.

"You're painting and waiting for it to dry. I use Resene paint and I make cakes and gemstones," he says revealing a thick Liquorice Allsort-esque round of dried paint.

Of the 48 pieces on the walls of his Great North Rd studio - where a giant bird with a shark's jaw mouth greets you - he says each work has essentially been painted "60 times over".

Titled Apocalyptic Intuition, the works, including the wizards and the head, will be shown at Wellington City Gallery from June 22. At this point the artist is unsure whether they will return to Auckland.

Although his next move will be to go to the UK, Europe and the US, there's a playground he bought from a second-hand store that awaits his Midas touch.

"I've bought parts of an old McDonald's playground. I've got the Grimace and the Hamburglar Tower.

"They're stored at my girlfriend's dad's farm. I'm not sure what I'll do with them yet."

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