If you come from Wellington - the home of
WETA - replication doesn't surprise you so much. The workshop has become a world leader in producing replications that are totally convincing. Tough lines for any artist who is in the same game and no one is in it more than the Kaikohe based sculptor Glen Hayward. But somehow Hayward manages to bring to his life-like objects another strain of being so they flicker in and out of the real world like that
Predator thing did when it was rushing through the jungle. So when we visited the
McCahon House in Titirangi the other day to see Glen Hayward’s wind-up exhibition as its latest resident, it was hard to see there was an exhibition there at all until you settled into the space.
It turned out that all the works were based on details from the McCahon house itself faithfully reproduced - a clunky light switch with DIY conduit, the lid off a can, a set of washing tubs, a section of wall that looked for all the world like something from Julian Schnabel, a hump of concrete and brick. Ripped out of their homely context in the McCahon House to be live another second life in the residency studio.
Images: Top left electrics at the McCahon House, right, Glen Hayward's Seventh day (a very reasonably priced multiple in an edition of five that has been made available to help raise funds for the McCahon House). Bottom, Glen Hayward's exhibition at the McCahon House residency studio
