Christine Hellyar

Christine Hellyar
Born 1947
New Plymouth, New Zealand
Education Diploma in Fine Arts (Hons) at the Elam School of Art
Known for Sculpture, teaching
Website http://www.christinehellyar.com/

Christine Hellyar (born 1947) is a New Zealand artist who makes sculptures and installations.[1]

Education

Hellyar was born in 1947 in New Plymouth. She completed a Diploma in Fine Arts (Hons) at the Elam School of Art in 1970.[1]

Work

Working in both sculpture and installation, Hellyar's work incorporates a wide range of materials, from found natural items such as grass and stones, to clay, fabric and plaster, to latex, lead and bronze for casting.[2]:54–55

Over the years consistent themes in Hellyar's work have included 'her celebration of the environment, her interest in people's interaction with nature, the validation of the domestic and a questioning of traditional gender roles'.[2]:54

At art school she was encouraged to experiment with rubber latex, then a new material.[1] Hellyar was drawn to the properties of the medium, which allowed for precise replication of texture and details, and used latex to cast objects such as leaves and pine cones.[2]:54

Country Clothesline (1972), now in the collection of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, was one of Hellyar's first major works: it comprises 22 items of clothing dipped in latex and strung along a rope propped up by a pole.[3]:161 There is an element of chance in the work, as there are no instructions as to what order the items should be hung in.[4]

An early exhibition titled Bush Situation (1976) created an environment to surround the viewer with floor pieces and hanging latex casts of vegetation, often stitched together with copper wire.[5]:88 Art historian Priscilla Pitts notes that 'Despite the subtlety of colour and detail in these works, some viewers found the flabby texture and rubbery smell of the latex unpleasant and distinctly unnatural, a less than welcome reminder that this was art, not nature'.[5]:88

From the late 1970s Hellyar began to work more with found objects and materials such as clay, which were less expensive and more readily available than latex and metal.[3]:161 Writer Warwick Brown describes a 'memorable 1979 exhibition' where Hellyar showed '70 small, soft sculptures made of stitched, unbleached calico enclosing various natural materials. Antennae ventured out of folds and pockets; furry, feathery things hid in cocoons or webs. Each small work had its own identity, and the spectator seemed surrounded by sheltering, reclusive life, gathered in a laboratory for study or experiment'.[1]

In 1982 Hellyar had an exhibition called Shelter at the Auckland City Art Gallery.[3]:162 For this she filled the room entirely with structures created from muslin, flax and twigs, which were plaited, woven and stitched together.[3]:163 The structures resembled traps, lairs or shelters, and were 'inhabited' by 'small creatures made from substances like fur and claws, shells and bark'.[3]:163

In the 1970s Hellyar spent periods living in Cornwall and in Scotland, when she travelled around Europe and visited many museums and galleries.[6] This experience fuelled her interest in the way objects are collected and displayed as 'artefacts'.[6] Subsequently Hellyar produced a series of works in the early 1980s known as 'Thought Cabinets', in which she drew on the aesthetics of museum displays, laying out bones, food and 'artefacts' she created from a variety of materials in cabinets, cupboards, trays, or directly on the floor of the gallery space.[2]:54 The works examine, among other ideas, the evolution of human thought and intelligence and how the hunter/gather model of ancient societies might apply to modern life.[1][2]:54

For the 1982 Sydney Biennale Hellyar created a sculptural installation with three components, Meat Cupboard, Dagger Cupboard and Cloak Cupboard. Wooden cabinets with glass fronts were filled with a variety of objects both created and collected by the artist: in a letter she described the contents of Meat Cupboard as "3 realistic bones from decent-sized cuts, 6 abstract foetal forms, 6 collected 'found' nests, 6 of my clay containers with different meat types in each."[7] Each group of items was placed on a separate shelf in its cabinet, with each shelf referencing a different style of art: Realism at the top, then Abstraction, then Found Objects, with the lowest shelf melding all three.[7]

In the mid 1980s Hellyar started working with latex and fabric again, and extended the ‘hunter/gatherer’ theme in works like the ‘Pacific Food Aprons’, in which latex castings of vegetables and meat were sewn onto fabric aprons.[2]:55[3]:163 Art historian Anne Kirker notes that by the time of her 1985 Aprons exhibition in Wellington, Hellyar was seen as 'one of the country's most thought-provoking and innovative sculptors'.[7] Priscilla Pitts in her 1998 survey of recent New Zealand sculpture notes that a tension between large ideas and subtle manifestations is key to Hellyar's work. Describing a 1986 installation work Being Born, Bearing Fruit and Dying, made up of plant and sea life forms moulded from fine white clay or cast in latex, bronze, lead or iron, Pitts writes:

These forms are grouped to lead the viewer through a schematised narrative not only of the human (and all of nature's) cycle of birth, reproduction and death, but also of the evolution of life, on earth, from the water to the land and finally to the air. The work is large and its themes are grand, yet through the fragmented, low-lying nature of the composition and the use of small, life-size objects, Hellyar ensures it is anything but monumental. This is a characteristic of much of her work, which consistently challenges modernist notions of sculpture as stand-alone, assertive and monolithic.[5]:89

In the 1990s Hellyar made large, delicate bronze sculptures cast from plants and flowers. She continues today to work across sculpture and installation.[1] In 2015 Hellyar collaborated with artists Maureen Lander and Jo Torr on an exhibition Tell Tails at the National Library of New Zealand.[8] The exhibition took inspiration from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library and Hellyar's contribution Red cloud is made up of dozens of handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, serviettes and napkins dyed blood red. These materials were all used as items of exchange in early interactions between indigenous people in the Pacific and European explorers; the work was inspired by a work by colonial artist William Ellis in which Tahitian people wear European neckerchiefs.[8]

Teaching career

Hellyar lectured at the Gippsland Institute of Higher Education in 1980 and was senior lecturer at Elam from 1981 to 1996.[2]:102 Anne Kirker noted in her 1986 history of New Zealand women artists that Hellyar had 'earned a reputation as a teacher and is one of the few women to be employed as such at either of the two university art schools in this country'.[7]

Major exhibitions and collections

Hellyar has exhibited consistently in New Zealand and internationally since the 1970s. Her work has been included in major exhibitions including the 1982 Biennale of Sydney, When Art Hits The Headlines (National Art Gallery, Wellington, 1987), NZXI (Auckland City Art Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and Contemporary Art Institute, Brisbane, 1988), Three from NZ (Long Beach Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1990), Headlands (MCA, Sydney, 1992), and Treasures of the Underworld (New Zealand Pavilion at the 1992 Seville Expo, Amsterdam and various New Zealand venues, 1992 to 1994).[2]:102

In 2005 Hellyar participated in the Tylee Cottage Residency at Whanganui's Sarjeant Gallery and in 2011 the resident botanic artist at the Auckland Botanic Gardens.[9]

Hellyar's work is held in many New Zealand public collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Christchurch Art Gallery.[4][6][6][10][11]

Further reading

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Brown, Warwick (1996). Another 100 New Zealand Artists. Auckland: Godwit Publishing. ISBN 0908877749.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Caughey, Elizabeth; Gow, John (2002). Contemporary New Zealand Art 3. Auckland: David Bateman Ltd. ISBN 1869534875.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kirker, Anne (1993). New Zealand Women Artists: A Survey of 150 Years (2nd ed.). Tortola, B.V.I.: Craftsman House. ISBN 9768097302.
  4. 1 2 "Country Clothesline (1972)". Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 Pitts, Priscilla (1998). Contemporary New Zealand sculpture : themes and issues. Auckland: David Bateman Ltd. ISBN 1869531698.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Biography of Christine Hellyar". Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Kirker, Anne (1986). New Zealand women artists. Auckland: Reed Methuen. p. 177. ISBN 0474001814.
  8. 1 2 "Tell Tails". National Library of New Zealand. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  9. ↑ "Biography". Christine Hellyar. Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  10. ↑ "Christine Hellyar". Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  11. ↑ "Body parts: White china cupboard". Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Retrieved 27 December 2014.
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