Len Lye down: when good sculpture turns bad

Nobody said owning a whole lot of sculptures powered by analogue motors, that bounce and bend and shake in ways that engineering probably doesn’t totally understand, would be easy. And guess what, it’s not. Trilogy - the dramatic Len Lye Centre headliner - was taken down just before the new building opened last year after it took a chunk out of the wall. Disappointing, but reasonably enough it was passed over as a blip.

But last week, when the three-part monster was put into place again in the new custom-made gallery for large Len Lye sculptures and revved up, there were more problems. Word is that it had to be stopped before it shook itself off the ceiling. Whoops (again). And wouldn’t you know it, this was in the first week of the school holidays (#kidslovenoisysculpture). So, no going up the ramp while the place is being re-strengthened enough for Trilogy to do its thing again after years in storage.

Still, there’s a moment for everyone who felt the Len Lye Centre had taken over the Govett-Brewster. Because of the mess-up all visitors now have to enter the new complex via the discreet Govett-Brewster Art Gallery entrance rather than the architect’s ramp. We could get used to that. And while your at it get rid of the new wall behind the reception desk. Then it's straight ahead to the G-B and LLC and, if you want to do the ramp thing, turn left. 

Later: Trilogy was reinstalled on 12 October and is now fully functional  

Image: Trilogy, back in the day

On reflection

Sometime during the day, if you have a chance, spare a thought for the staff of the Govett Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Centre. Now the architectural community has finished congratulating itself, it’s becoming clear that what's been left is one of the most difficult spaces in the country to exhibit art in.

Unsurprisingly, the things that have so excited the architectural gatekeepers are the very things that make it difficult. Start with the mega statement of the cathedral-like entry with its columns and sloping floor. Once the wow factor has worn off, it’s a very large, very empty, very grey space. It does have potential of course and especially for commissioned projects by artists. Andrew Beck, by all accounts, made a great job of it in the last round, but there’s a limit to how often you can find keen young artists willing to make a splash on limited resources.

When you do get to the top of the grand hall to Len Lye’s large scale kinetic works, strangely given the hype in the planning stage, it's too small! The new Fountain IV all but brushes the roof and looks surprisingly cramped.

At the base of the long ramp of course is the far from obvious entrance to the Govett-Brewster  Art Gallery. The two large lower galleries are no more. As you move through it you can't help wondering how architects could leave this awkward space behind them as a piece of serious art gallery design. As an introduction to the gallery it's a tough call for any exhibition designer.

The staff at least has got a pleasant sunny cafe where they can dream about putting the place to rights. They certainly must be nervous at the thought of audience numbers dropping if a threatened admission charge comes into play next year. The New Plymouth City Council has somehow convinced itself and its public that the bright shiny facade (a magnet for selfies) will continue to make its newest facility a destination attraction. But the reality is that the selfie takers don’t get added into the all-important visitor numbers, for that you have to go inside. And look at the art.

Big, bigger, biggest

How big is too big for an art museum?  No doubt about it, building has turned out to be more fun for directors than collecting or even putting shows together. A feature of NZ’s art museum building boom since the 1980s, is that it has triggered pressure on funds for everything else. Exhibitions, public programmes and collections have to go on the endless hunt for private funding. It’s not just a local problem, of course, as this NY Times article demonstrates. There are profound structural consequences to deal with too which are seldom factored in when everyone is playing with plans and models. As the buildings get bigger, the number on staff grows too, and once you have staff, they want to do things. And that costs money.

Now even the slightest exhibition gets a full schedule of targeted activities and sessions for the kids who have to create sculptures one month and copy paintings the next. Artists cop it too as the new super-sized spaces have got to be filled even though this is not something all artists are good at, even when the dollars are available.

The curious thing is that most of this attention grab just seems to be about getting more people through the door. At a time when capitalism is facing fundamental questions about growth for its own sake, the museums’ claims to social responsibility and sustainability are looking tattered. All this is why, having cracked remarkable attendances with the opening of the new Len Lye Center, the director looks ahead to next year with trepidation when the gloss will be off. ‘I'm terrified,’ he admits.

Counter attack

You do have to wonder why public art museums keep using numbers to justify their existence and their funding. As Richard Pierce, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Museum, once famously said, 'The whole attendance figure game is just that - a game.’ For all the electronic devices, hand-held counters and surveys, audience counting is an art not a science. As anyone working in a busy institution knows the only real count is a paid-for ticket but you do to have to feel a twinge of sympathy for Simon Rees, the director of the Govett-Brewster. He invested in the usual electronic people counters used by museums internationally beefed up with some staff using manual clickers and the figures have been suitably impressive: 30,000 through the new complex already. But wouldn’t you know it. One of the G-B's chief detractors has an office overlooking the building and by looking out his window he's making his own assessment. Rather predictably it is somewhat lower. Of course the opening months of any new building can be expected to pull the crowds but even if, allowing for initial attendances settling down, you halve that first month's 30,000 as your base the G-B would be indicating an annual attendance of around 180,000. Now that's a stretch as we've discussed before. And that's the problem with figures; today’s success is the rope they hang you with tomorrow.

The way things Lye in New Plymouth

First, the good stuff. The entrance hall and sweeping lead-up to the galleries in the new Len Lye Centre are impressive. The sloping floor was a surprise but the height, the modulated walls reflecting the exterior forms and the tall narrow windows that reveal themselves as you ascend give the sense that you have entered a large and important building. But you quickly realise this splendid entrance over-promises given the limited additional spaces and how much of the building's space is taken up with transiting from one area to another. An ongoing problem with the Govett-Brewster was always the way every space made you feel you were always on the way to somewhere else. Strange then to find the Len Lye addition repeating this pattern. You also have to wonder how the long sloped ramp will impact on installation practices. It's like the Guggenheim on speed, and the complexity of that famous ramp as a working environment is very well known.

Then, for all the millions that have been spent, there is really only one classic four-walled gallery in the new building, and while it's somewhat larger, it's a similar square box to the one that used to adjoin the G-B. The other new gallery space used for the suite of Lye's Fountain works merges with the ramp and is only three sided. And while on the Fountain works you do have to wonder why the new large Fountain was even allowed to go on display. It clearly does not work. The rods do move, thanks to an electric motor but, unlike the smaller Fountains on display for comparison, there is no quivering response through the rods the feature that makes the original so lively and iconic. The over-sized scale is also a problem ironically making the new Fountain look rather stunted. It’s a major issue for the long-term members of the Len Lye Foundation as clearly no one associated with these projects feels they are in a position to stand up and make the call for art and aesthetics over engineering and pragmatism. 

And then there is the entrance to the old Govett-Brewster. Given the repeated assurances by the previous director and architect during the planning and build that the G-B would share its entrance with the LLC - 'Left to the Len Lye Centre, right to the Govett-Brewster' - the virtually hidden entrance to the G-B is inexcusable.  There's no reason it couldn't have been bigger apart from it taking attention away from the 'Temple' like entrance to the Lye sector. The G-B has also lost space in its ground floor galleries and functional requirements have further fragmented its overall flow. The staircase to the first level may have been amended into an art work by Billy Apple but it now looks comically truncated and painting the old spaces black has only served to make the old G-B spaces feel pinched and gloomy. 

Then, given the architectural effort put into building the Len Lye Centre, it makes no sense at all that the massive Trilogy can still only be shown in the G-B. Indeed Trilogy was slated to be in place for the opening but OTN understands Len Lye’s ghost, embarrassed by the thought of also dominating the G-B at the opening, made Trilogy go haywire so it had to be replaced with three very impressive works by et al. (Thanks Len). 

OK, it's early days, of course; the G-B will no doubt revert to white again, director Simon Rees will have more realistic installation schedules and the current Lye exhibits will be refreshed, but at the moment in New Plymouth’s visual arts culture, the Govett-Brewster is definitely no longer at the centre.
Image: standing in for Len Lye. et al. on borrowed time at the Govett-Brewster

See ya

To celebrate the Govett-Brewster reopening as New Zealand’s leading shiny thing, here are some other buildings around the world that use a mirror surface to attract attention, vanish from sight and generally reflect what’s going on around them. More here on Dezeen
 
Images: top to bottom left to right, Frank Gehry’s  Neuer Zollhof in Düsseldorf, random sky scraper in Beijing, Mirror Houses by Peter Pilcher in Italy, Cairns Botanic Gardens Visitors’ Centre by Charles Wright Architects and Tham and Videgard's Tree house

Shape shifting

So what do you get if you put the new Govett-Brewster | Len Lye Centre logo into Google and search for similar shapes? This, that's what, so in good company there with Nike and QANTAS. The closest to the G-B brand turns out to be Bare Valley Bikes. Make of that what you will.
Image: Govett-Brewster logo left hand side, second from the top

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Sydney sider
Having been hammered to death from 2007 to 2009 the artist resale royalty popped up again in the Sunday Star Times. Weirdly artist Grahame Sydney came out against it calling its supporters "Greedy. Immensely greedy." He went on to say that a sale was a sale and that as such it was "A firm, final contract between two parties - the implicit agreement being 'I will give you this thing I have made in return for this amount of money I have asked for, or we have mutually agreed is fair'. At that point, as with any sale, I relinquish my ownership rights to it.” Presumably he exempts copyright payments, the other artist royalty system, from this hard line position.

Art chart  A couple of years ago we looked at the male/female ratio in dealer galleries. Has the situation changed at all since then? Well yes it has. It’s not mega but there has been a small increase overall in the representation of women: just one percent up to a still pretty bleak 34 percent overall. In dealer galleries run by women the percentage increase was 10 percent (to 52 percent) with galleries run by men dropping their representation of women by 5 percent. If you want to look at the representative list of galleries we based these figures on you can see it here.

Gold 
The golden trumpet for stretching description beyond recognition goes this month to New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd for: "The Govett-Brewster is a cornerstone of contemporary art globally.” You may smile now.

By the numbers: Venice edition

0  the number of artists who have used the Marco Polo airport as a venue

1    the number of times we didn’t go because et al. annoyed the PM

2         the number of venues being used by Simon Denny

7         the number of times NZ has been represented

41       the number of NZ at Venice patrons

44       the percentage of NZ Venice participants who have been female

45       the average age of artists representing NZ

33       the age of this year’s participant Simon Denny

56       the number of art biennales that have been held in Venice

75       the percentage of women who had to show as part of a two-hander

80       the percentage of men who had solo shows at Venice

88       the number of countries that participate at Venice

197     the days the Venice Biennale will run in 2015

Miniatures
If you haven’t seen the tiny furniture by set designer John Parker on OTN’s site, it's beyond cute. And for all miniature fanatics this great behind-the-scenes clip of tiny LA being constructed for the movie Earthquake.

Pay and display

Looks like the Govett-Brewster will be forced to go behind a pay wall. The New Plymouth City Council is proposing a rates cap and as part of the cuts required the museum would need to generate nearly $200,000 a year at the door. If the G-B goes with something like the MTG Hawke's Bay's pricing structure where locals get in free, they'd only need around 25,000 out-of-town visitors stumping up to meet the target. With the new Len Lye Centre promoted as a tourist magnet, a door charge would certainly test Lye’s pulling power. Unless of course the G-B can reel in a $200,000 a year sponsor to keep things free for visitors or choose to make cuts elsewhere.

Leading the charge

By their surveys shall you know them. The New Plymouth City Council is currently on a fishing expedition to see if it can get away with charging an entry fee for the new combined Len Lye/Govett-Brewster hybrid.

Acting General Manager Community Services Kelvin Day says the Gallery is gathering valuable feedback on key topics, including the combined institution's new cinema, free or paid entry, and public programmes. The questions start with how much you'd be prepared to pay for entry and whether or not an entry fee would change your visiting patterns. And then inevitably, focus on the real question, “Would you be happy for your out-of-town guests to pay an entry fee if you were able to enter for free?” This one's well down the list so no doubt the survey team is hoping that even the most ardent supporter of a free institution will have no-fees fatigue and let this one go with a 'Yes'.

But hang on. The people of New Plymouth spent a lot of energy making sure that ‘not a single cent of rates money' was spent on constructing the new building. That funding came from the government, gambling and petrochemical whitewashing. Surely that major contribution deserves some kind of benefit.

And New Plymouth needs more than wishful thinking on this one. The city is not a tourist hot spot like Rotorua (where all out-of-towners are charged $20) so how much the Govett-Brewster would in fact earn from entry fees is a big question. You can look to the MTG Hawkes Bay debacle for how easy it is to get the sums wrong and the Len Lye Center is hoping to get 90,000 visitors a year (bet that wasn't based on a fee paying audience). All entry charges usually do is alienate your national audience, only pick up a few paying international tourists and lose the energy that attracts the local audience. Lose lose.

How about going back to the petrochemical guys and asking them to sponsor free entry for everyone, the gift that keeps on giving.

Anyone who wants to help keep the Govett-Brewster free can do the survey here. You know what to do.

By the numbers

5         the number of contemporary bronze sculptures reported stolen in New Zealand since 2005

6         the ranking of Auckland Art Gallery patron Julian Roberts in a list of the most generous American philanthropists in finance

8          the number of years MTG former director Douglas Lloyd Jenkins will have devoted to the people of Hawkes Bay and Napier when he leaves town in December

12        the number of days left to put in an application to be the new chief executive of Te Papa

19.5     the amount in millions of dollars estimated as the value of the Christchurch Art Gallery’s site

30.65   the price in dollars per square centimetre paid for Colin McCahon’s North Otago painting at the last Webb’s auction

33        the height in metres of the Phil Price sculpture Zephyrometer that was struck by lightning in Wellington

34        the number in thousands of dollars that the Napier City Council spent to get a report on the first six months operation of its revamped museum MTG

360      the amount in thousands of dollars currently allocated as the salary of the CE of Te Papa

510      the number of stainless steel panels that will make up the façade of the Govett-Brewster’s Len Lye Center in New Plymouth

768     the number of people following the new senior curator of the Christchurch Art Gallery (aka Cheryl Bernstein) on Twitter

Move, move, move

Without our link to Len Lye it's hard to imagine that Wellington would have commissioned a bunch of kinetic sculptures. Auckland was a step ahead with Michio Ihara’s Wind Tree produced for the Auckland International Sculpture Symposium in 1971 and now installed in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter. Ten years later they also purchased George Rickey’s Double-L Excentric Gyratory to coincide with Andrew Bogle’s exhibition Chance and Change. Today it's installed alongside the Gallery.

Commissioning kinetic sculpture is one thing though, and looking after them is something else entirely as Wellington is discovering. Leon Van Den Eijkel Urban forest has only rarely spun on all cylinders, Phil Dadson’s Akau Tangi is often a few spinners down and even though it's up and running again after a long break, Len Lye’s Water Whirler only gives out the ghost of its intended performance. 

Now one of the most successful (kinetically speaking) of Wellington's sculptures, Phil Price's Zephyrometer, has been dismantled for maintenance. Peering at the housing laid out on the ground though it looks as if the strain on the base has ripped at the sculpture’s skin. Who knows how long it will be down but the problem appears a little more serious than a quick clean and oil job.

Soon New Plymouth will have a whole museum devoted to kinetic sculpture with its Len Lye Centre. Kinetic sculpture in NZ has become a movement.

Images: top, Zephyrometer laid out for repair. Middle, damage to the housing and bottom, in case you have never seen the point of Zephyrometer, here it is.

Give a little, give a lot

How’s Boosted going we hear you ask again. In its first nine months in action Boosted raised “over $250,000.” Not too bad but it does cover all the art forms and it's nowhere near the amount raised by say the Venice Patrons, for instance. Still Boosted has pulled together $69,000 for the visual arts (but again $25,000 of that was almost certainly set-up in advance with the Christchurch Art Gallery to give everyone a cliff-hanger last minute win).

For all the talk by the government about philanthropy (“a priority to encourage increased private sector giving in addition to, not instead of, existing levels of public support for the arts and cultural organisations”) it doesn't exactly lead from the front. For a start, there's no real incentives out there. Ok the IRD returns a third of cash donations to registered charities based on income and there was a specific one-off $95,000 dollar-for-dollar pilot scheme for the arts, but there's no sign of anything serious like US incentives in the form of deductions on works gifted to collections for example.

And then there's the reality of where the money raised actually comes from. Look at a big money project like the Len Lye Centre. $1 million came from the private sector via the TSB although that was five years ago - before the Government's philanthropy flurry. Then more private sector cash with Todd Energy coming up with $3 million no doubt delighted how much its Len Lye efforts have  helped allay concerns around fracking at the Mangahewa gas and condensate field near Waitara. But philanthropy at the individual level failed to catch only bringing in $200,000. The rest of the Len Lye Centre fund-raising came directly or indirectly from the state via $4 million from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and $3.2 million from the Lotteries Commission. And let's not forget the local body contribution to refit and running costs.

In the end filling out forms and doing meetings with Government Departments and keeping in good with the local Council still gets you a better return than a charm offensive on the private sector.

The shining II

The Len Lye Centre will be pleased to see that it is to be joined by another mirror surfaced museum this one in Rotterdam. The architectural firm MVRDV has just won the design competition for its for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen's collection building.

Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet: before her resignation post the chaotic unitec restructuring, head of design and contemporary arts deanne koelmeyer was holidaying on her boat the graft spee named after a german naval vessel scuttled by its captain • bambury v jensen nz’s jarndyce v jarndyce is waiting in the pen for a high court hearing in auckland • the len lye centre in new plymouth has secured full funding via another substantial grant from the lotteries board making their support a total of  almost three million of the ten million required • university of auckland's gus fisher gallery is going it alone and will not replace its sole curator • ann shelton and phil dadson have left starkwhite • te papa has begun bench marking prices paid for acquisitions after a run of record-breaking purchases • sounds like auckland art consultant trish clark has sealed the deal on the ex-hairdressing salon near the university for her new dealer gallery • a temporary installation in the auckland art gallery foyer will hold the space as negotiations with scottish artist martin creed continue • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud will be suitably rewarded

The Lye of the land

Due to open mid 2015 the Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth is well underway. 

Progress so far:

• The stainless steel for the façade has arrived from Japan
• The moulds for the shaping of the stainless façade have been made and tested
• Second story precast walls are being put in place

To come:

• The construction of a steel frame work to support the pre-cast exterior wall that will in turn be covered by the shaped mirror surface stainless steel.

You can read a more complete report of progress here

By the numbers: local edition

0         the number of art museums to receive matching dollar-for-dollar funding in the latest round of Creative NZ’s Matched Funding Scheme

5         the average number of entries posted a month on the Auckland Art Gallery blog last year

14.83  the cost in dollars of a taxi from Te Papa to the Terrace as noted in the Chief Executive’s published expenses disclosures

27       the number of people currently serving on Creative NZ councils soon to be reduced to 13

32       the number in tonnes of steel that will be required to fabricate the mirror surface façade for the Len Lye Centre

50       the number in kilograms of gold glitter used to make Reuben Paterson’s gold tree Golden bearing for New Plymouth’s Pukekura Park

68       the number of artists given solo exhibitions in the 47 years Peter McLeavey ran the Peter McLeavey Gallery in Cuba Street

10       the number of days left to put in an application for the role of senior curator at the Christchurch Art Gallery

150     the revised number in thousands of people that Napier City now still projects will visit its new museum each year

195     the number in thousands that is paid in salary to the director of the Auckland Art Gallery

300     the number of artworks estimated to be lost in the John and Lynda Matthews house fire

690     the number in thousands of people that Napier City in a burst of confidence initially projected would visit its new museum each year.

Not so simple Simon

A bumpy road ahead for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Anyone following the New Plymouth District Council’s debate before it agreed to help fund the Len Lye Centre building project would have seen that the margin of support was not great even then. The last local body elections resulted in a Council that is likely to be even less supportive of the GB’s expansionist plans. 

An indication that the new Council situation might have immediate effects on the Gallery comes with the news that the appointment of the German curator hired to take over from Mercedes Vincent has been called off. Vincent left over a year ago so it seems no curator will now be appointed until the new building is well underway. 

New director Simon Rees will have to call on all his well known diplomatic skills to get the Council back on side and ramp up fund raising for the project’s projected cash shortage.

Future proofing

OTN isn’t so keen on (#didn'tgetroundtomakingone) annual that-was-the-year-that-was lists, but what-do-you-reckon-will-happen-this-year lists? Now that’s a different story.

Steady on
Around the end of April the Walters Prize selection committee will produce a more conventional list of older finalists

Drawing the line
More university art schools will come under severe pressure from the Government via the Tertiary Education Commission to reduce staff and student numbers

HK OK
Dealers will swing their art fair energy from Europe to Asia

Still life
A lot of art will be made and a heap of museum time and money expended to glorify the completely senseless slaughter of World War I

Man alone
A lone New Zealander will slope over to Sydney to install his work in the 18th Biennale of Sydney

Boy oh boy
More men will get more solo shows in the public art museums

Time Lord
In Auckland T J McNamara will ease into his 47th year of reviewing art for the NZ Herald

Painting by numbers
More figurative paintings will create more auction records

Northern exposure
Te Papa will start wishing it had never come up with the idea of putting an outreach gallery into South Auckland

How great thou art
Everyone will be super excited by the awesome art stuff that will be tweeted throughout the year #whoa #thrilling #because

But who’s counting
Over the net will publish its 4,000th post

The Scottish play
The Auckland Art Gallery will announce the mother of all art works is to hang in its foyer

On reflection
The Govett-Brewster will find out whether or not that shiny mirror surface on the Len Lye Centre is feasible and, if it is, whether it’s actually a good idea

Slice and dice
Creative New Zealand’s budget will be spread even thinner across a wider range of art forms

Movement
Christchurch Art Gallery will straighten up

Len of the North

Did no one else notice the spooky reference to Len Lye in this recent photo published in the Taranaki Daily News to show progress on the building of the Len Lye Centre? Does it support those critics who fret that Len Lye will swamp the Govett-Brewster brand or is it just a coincidental arrangement of two slabs of concrete in a tilt slab building? You be the judge.

As you can see from the pic, the back wall is under construction (this will not have the mirror surfaced stainless steel façade) and the beginnings of the theatre. Latest reports are that construction the building is on track and on budget, that track being an opening in mid-2015 and the budget under or equal to the $11.5 million that has been stumped up for the 'build and fit-out'.

Somewhat off track is the Govett-Brewster Foundation who are evidently growing increasingly frustrated over the of the shiny new LL Centre’s potential to swamp the Govett-Brewster’s brand and its role in NZ’s contemporary art culture. We understand they are holding back to give the new director time to get behind his desk but that an April deadline has been proposed to resolve outstanding issues.

In the meantime the Govett-Brewster and the Len Lye Foundation have sent an exhibition of Lye’s work (Len Lye Agiagiā) to the Mangere Art Centre leading the new trend for southern sharing in the suburbs of Auckland. If you want to go to the opening this Saturday you can get a bus from outside Artspace on K'Rd at 5.45pm, back at 8.15pm.