An Explanation of Light

source: finslab

Bill Culbert é um importante artista de Nova Zelândia, notável por seu uso da luz na pintura, fotografia, escultura e instalação, bem como a sua utilização de materiais encontrados e reciclados. Ele nasceu em Port Chalmers, perto de Dunedin e agora divide seu tempo entre Londres, Croagnes, França e Nova Zelândia. Ele é casado com a artista Pip Culbert e tem feito muitos trabalhos colaborativos com o artista Ralph Hotere.

Juventude e educação

Bill Culbert estudou na Escola de Belas Artes de Ilam, da Universidade de Canterbury, Christchurch 1953-1956, ao lado de Pat Hanly, Gil Taverner, Quentin McFarlane, Trevor Moffitt, Ted Bracey, John Coley e Hamish Keith muitos que viviam na mesma casa em Armagh Street. Culbert recebeu uma bolsa Galeria Nacional de Arte em 1957 e deixou Nova Zelândia para estudar pintura no Royal College of Art, em Londres. Expôs nos jovens contemporâneos e Jovem Commonwealth Artistas exposições ao lado do companheiro expatriado neozelandês, Billy Apple.

Carreira

Culbert começou a experimentar com a luz elétrica em 1967. Ele teve uma exposição individual na Galeria Serpentine, em Londres, em 1977. A exposição levantamento touring Lightworks foi organizado pelo City Gallery Wellington em 1997. Ele participou da primeira Trienal de Auckland, em 2001. Em 2013, ele representou Nova Zelândia na 55ª Bienal de Veneza. Sua exposição, intitulada Front Door Out Back, foi exibido no pavilhão da Nova Zelândia, situada no Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà.

Ele tem esculturas comissionados permanentes em Londres, Wellington e Auckland. Muitos são os trabalhos de colaboração com Ralph Hotere, incluindo Falha na fachada da Galeria da Cidade de Wellington, nula no átrio do Museu da Nova Zelândia Te Papa Tongarewa e Toco Preto, a 20m de altura da coluna do lado de fora do Centro de Vero em Auckland. Seu trabalho é realizado em colecções públicas e privadas em toda a Nova Zelândia e Europa.
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source: sculptureorguk

Bill Culbert was born in Port Chalmers, New Zealand, in 1935. He studied fine art at Canterbury University School of Art (1953-56) and post-primary teaching at Auckland Training College, New Zealand (1957). He then came to London to study painting at the Royal College of Art (1957-60), gaining a silver medal for painting on graduation.

For the last thirty years, Bill Culbert has been working with light, using it to transform objects and to create new ones. Andrea Shlieker has written, “Culbert is best known for making hybrids of ordinary domestic objects – wine glass, stool, jug or table, thus forming illuminating (in both senses of the word) and surreal fusions… Yet these bricolages always have a lightness of touch, as well as a sense of humour and playful serendipity.”

At the Royal College, Culbert was a contemporary of the British Pop Artists who were being widely fêted at the time, Allen Jones, David Hockney, Peter Blake and Patrick Caulfield being of their number. In some of his light works Culbert looked to the same subject matter as Caulfield, even Michael Craig-Martin, but there the similarity ended; his sculptural vocabulary has grown in a different direction, to one that harnesses the possibilities of drawing with light. Shlieker has written further: “From the outset, colour has been an important artistic objective and device for Culbert. It found perhaps its most buoyant expression in his series of wall sculptures of the early 1990s, such as Colour Theory 1991 and Total 1991. Multi-coloured plastic bottles were speared and illuminated by neon tubes, thereby borrowing the existing colour of the object to achieve chromatic brilliance.”

Culbert has exhibited regularly throughout his career, his first solo exhibition being at the Commonwealth Institute Gallery, London, in 1961. His work has been acquired by public collections, most notably in Britain and New Zealand.

Bill now divides his time between London and Provence, Southern France.
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source: whatsoncityofsydneynswgovau

Working with found materials and everyday sources of light, Bill Culbert creates illuminated environments that radiate energy and simplicity.
His art brings elegant formality to the chaos of everyday experience, inviting us to revalue familiar things and focus our perceptions.

Bill Culbert was born in 1935 in Port Chalmers, New Zealand. He trained as a painter in the 1950s at the Canterbury University School of Art in New Zealand and gained a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London in 1957. In the 1960s he began to experiment with light and movement, and since the 1970s his art has encompassed photography, electric light, and found objects. He lives between France and London, and returns frequently to New Zealand.

Culbert represented New Zealand in the 55th Venice Biennale of Art with a comprehensive body of work collectively titled Front Door Out Back, he has held numerous solo exhibitions in New Zealand, England, Europe, the United States and Australia, and has appeared in many group exhibitions. He has also produced major public sculptures in Christchurch, London, Auckland and Wellington.