Humphrey Ikin

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Humphrey Ikin was born in 1957 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. He is a furniture designer.

Ikin completed a degree in Business Studies at Massey University before beginning an architectural degree at the University of Auckland. However, finding he was focusing more on the furniture for buildings than their structures, he became a self-taught furniture designer and maker.

Humphrey has been at the forefront of New Zealand's design renaissance since the early 1980s. Dubbed a pioneer of the new Pacific design, he creates pieces that represent a successful blending of South Pacific symbolism and splendour with the functionalism of European modernism. Ikin has been inspired by things that he sees around him: the benches carved from single tree trunks for Solomon Island Chiefs; the natural rugged beauty of the Pacific; the practical functionalism of the New Zealand farm. Furniture as art has been a recurring theme of his work.

His furniture is now known worldwide for its design quality and Pacific minimalist look. In 1998 New York's I.D. Magazine listed him as one of the top forty designers in the world and featured his piece Red Stave Chair alongside work by well-known designers Jasper Morrison (England), Philippe Starck (France), and Antonio Citterio (Italy). In 2001 he won the prestigious John Britten Design Award, presented annually by the Designers' Institute of New Zealand. In 2003 he received the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award.

What has set Humphrey's work apart is his ongoing interest in the broader context of furniture, its history, its rituals and its future possibilities - expressed eloquently in the series of solo exhibitions he has held over two decades, most notably Room at the Dowse Art Museum (1994) and Facing North at the Wellington City Gallery (1997) and the Auckland Museum (1998). Facing North has been described as a seminal piece of work which gives proof to the assertion that the domestic object deserves critical attention to no lesser degree than the fine arts.

Humphrey's work is held in both public and private collections in New Zealand and throughout the world. He teaches part-time at Unitec New Zealand in Auckland where, in 2002 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Furniture Design at the School of Design. In 2005 he completed, at the University of Auckland, the Architecture degree left unfinished at the outset of his career.

[edit] Exhibitions

1987 - Solo Exhibition, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington
1990 - Solo Exhibition, Fisher Gallery, Auckland
1991 - Solo Exhibition, RKS ART, Auckland
1994 - Solo Exhibitions, RKS ART, Auckland
1994 - Room, Solo Exhibition, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt
1997 - Facing North, Solo Exhibition, City Gallery, Wellington and the Auckland Museum (1998)