KEY POINTS:
What: Winter on Waiheke
Phil Newbury, Waiheke Artist in Residence
Where and when: Waiheke Community Art Gallery, to September 19
It has been a busy year for the people at the Waiheke Community Art Gallery. In late February they mounted the hugely successful Sculpture on the Gulf exhibition, with 26 environmentally inspired pieces positioned along a walkway around the spectacular headland south of Matiatia Bay.
One of the exhibits in that show was Clear/blue Cactus, a tall spike with upward-pointing glass fronds transformed by a delicate blue light in the evenings. Its creator, Southland glass artist Phil Newbury, is again exhibiting on the island but this time the show, Winter on Waiheke, is the culmination of nine weeks as artist-in-residence.
Newbury is self-taught, a master craftsman with 42 years of glasswork under his belt, 28 of them as a studio artist. The range of pieces in the show reflects those years with small slumped and fused utility pieces such as platters sharing the space with three substantial freestanding works and a number of wall-mounted works.
Most have come north with him but the centrepiece, The Gates O'Waiheke, has been created during the residency.
It dominates the floor, the two partially-open wings of the gates shepherding viewers towards the largest of the wall-mounted pieces, a quartet of Ralph Hotere-inspired panels titled Infinite Amounts of Zero.
Each of the gates is made of four narrow fish-shaped panels, each comprised of an aluminium frame supporting a series of clear cut-glass plates in the top third, a spine with horizontal blue and green glass ribs in the centre and wave-like curves across the base or tail.
Glass is an interesting medium with challenges and rewards that rapidly become apparent in the act of trying to photograph it. Being able to see through a piece means the walls, lighting gantries, spotlights, people viewing the show and your own reflections are all mixed up with the work. There's an interplay of highly reflective surface with the substance, density and body of the glass itself.
Here, it absorbs, reflects and transmits light, or, in the case of the cut-glass plates, breaks and splinters it; there, it passes a wash of colour over its surroundings. It casts shadows like soft tattoos, on floors, walls and on people. Because the glass is sometimes transparent, sometimes opalescent and you can see through and around it, objects and vistas are distorted, framed and reframed by supporting structures and the outlines of the piece you are looking through. Then again, what you see is not just in front of you but also what is behind, mirrored in the skin of the glass.
As structures, gates are equally ambiguous. When closed, they are barriers. When they are open, or partly open, they are an invitation and a threshold. Solid gates obstruct viewing as well as preventing access, but open or shut, The Gates O'Waiheke reveal what lies beyond through their filtered shapes. In naming this piece for the island, Newbury is alluding to its separation, and in choosing the narrow pointed forms for the panels, evokes wider Pacific images: leaves, spears and palisades.
Newbury's other major pieces are more direct in their meaning. Bud I and Bud II are tall, narrow, trumpet-like flowers illuminated by halogen lights. They belong to a series of 10 exploring genetic modification, with each piece a progression from its predecessor. There are also several fused glass and vitreous enamel Virus panels, in which the artist has in mind both biological and technological perils.
Like migrant birds, Newbury and his wife Caroline have been on the island for the winter, luxuriating in the relatively benign climate, enjoying the colour of the flame trees and the warmth of the local hospitality. Newbury has had the use of a large barn within walking distance of the gallery and held a two-day glass-making workshop there as well as providing regular Friday night mutton bird feasts for visitors.
The residency, funded by 13 patrons who all have some connection with the island, was initiated by Waiheke Community Art Gallery director Linda Chalmers. She describes it as the perfect complement to the biennial Sculpture on the Gulf and anticipates it will eventually alternate with the larger exhibition. It might, on occasion, provide a base for preparation of a piece for showing in Sculpture on the Gulf in the following year. There is also the possibility that future residencies will be extended to 12 weeks.
"We are delighted with this one," she says. "It has been an outstanding success, and although it was not initially planned to be a winter programme, it has turned out well, providing a level of interest and activity over what are otherwise quiet months."
Certainly, as the number of red stickers attest, the show has been a hit with its audience.
