Exhibition

Fracture

Artist Residency - Japan

April, May 2024

The invitation to this Artist Residency in Japan came from Wataru Hamasaka – sculptor and Professor Emeritus at Kurashiki University of Science and Arts. It was a privilege to realize the Fracture project in unique and diverse spaces:– the living and working areas of the Cajuan Residency house a traditional Taisho/ early Showa era dwelling, and, exhibitions in the ancient Yakage Honjin with a history that stretches back 400 years to Edo Japan, and the contemporary Hamasaka Caju Studio at Hattori Tamashima designed by the acclaimed Kazunori Fujimoto.

This experience in traditional settings saw us fully immersed in the Japanese architectural aesthetic including living in an old village in close proximity to Kurashiki City with its extensive and well maintained Bikan trading area.

The use of Japanese materials - Awagami bamboo paper, bamboo, traditional kakishibu dye made from fermented persimmons, consideration of architectural and domestic proportions as in tatami mats, and techniques such as corner jointing and pegs – all added a valuable dynamic to my project. I refined my practice to using simple and sustainable materials and techniques with the primary ingredient being time. Considering concepts like “nintai” (patience, commitment, perseverance) or the notions behind “senbazuru” (repetitive labour).

Exhibition

The Entanglement of Fact and Value

Milford Gallery Dunedin

For decades, Christchurch-based sculptor Graham Bennett has explored the ways in which humankind uses and quantifies the natural environment - and the impact this has on the living world. Bennett co-opts the physical and abstract languages of measurement to serve his practice, and degrees of longitude or latitude, surveying marks, scales, triangulation all find their place in the artist’s sculptures. Bennett extends these scientific and visual metaphors with pointed commentary about the ecological and ethical issues arising from slavish adherence to economic growth.

Installation

Connect

BrainTree Wellness Centre - Christchurch

Installed July 2022 in the BrainTree Wellness Centre, Christchurch

www.canterburybraincollective.org

Exhibition

Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden

Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden

Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden’s mission is to support contemporary New Zealand sculpture practice and enhance native biodiversity in Canterbury. Open for the first three weekends in March and by appointment. Exhibition 2021: Saturdays and Sundays March 5 - 6, 12 -13, 19 – 20, 10 am – 4 pm. 199 Cossars Road, Christchurch 7672. Open by appointment throughout the year. Enquiries: pjoyce@xtra.co.nz

Exhibition

Axis + Axes: Graham Bennett Experimental Works

Canterbury Museum

This exhibition at Canterbury Museum (May – November 2021) showcased Bennett’s sculptures alongside objects from the Museum’s collection that inspired them. Many of the artworks were from the artist’s rarely seen personal collection. Bennett’s association with Canterbury Museum dates back to the 1990s when he was permitted to make rubbings of some of the Pacific artefacts “For me, the privilege of close contact with an artefact – to understand and to honour it – is to have a private conversation, across time, with the maker and to pay tribute to their skill, energy and application.” Bennett was particularly drawn to ceremonial adzes made in Mangaia, the second largest of the Cook Islands. These ornate and cumbersome tools had no practical purpose but were instead made for trade with visiting Europeans. Transfers: inspired by the skilful and elegant carvings of the Mangaian adzes, was created for the 2008 exhibition Conversations Across Time: Whakawhiti Kōrero.

There were two other significant installations -- Converse also made in 2008, and, Disrupt created especially for AXIS + AXES in 2021. Converse: speaks of intervention, independence and collectiveness. 60 pod forms (segments of the globe), each with a central eye or core stand on interlocking base plates that have drifted apart. Disrupt : 33 machine-shaped wooden axes with laser-cut perforations were made from introduced pine and native timbers. This work was partly inspired by poet Allen Curnow’s 1948 verse play The Axe, which dramatizes the disruptive effects of colonisation and introduction of metal technology in the Pacific.

Bennett’s experimentation and exploration were on show in other works for example: Patterns of the Pacific and his methods of creating patterns Sarria Garden maquettes, A Question of Connection, Hidden Depths, Transfer and Transfer Maquette, History Repeats, Its About Time, Common Ground, Taenga, Karihi – Collaboration with Sally McAra Measurement and Navigation aids Stick charts, A Matter of Degree - Collaboration with tapestry artist Marilyn Rea-Menzies, Defining the Line, Axis, T.R.I.G – How Near, How Far?, To Where, Manipulate, Selfie, Why Weight, Why Wait?

Views from Canterbury Museum exhibition

Exhibition

Seeking a Balance

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū

Over more than five decades, this internationally-recognised, Christchurch-based artist has become known for finely-worked investigations of form, pattern and structure across a variety of scales and materials. His works consider ideas of orientation and identity, often framed through the imagery of mapping, measurement and navigation. Presenting highlights from a career shaped by curiosity and connection, this selection of sculptures and drawings also provides a context for Bennett’s most memorable outdoor commissions, including the monumental Reasons for Voyaging, created for Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū’s forecourt in 2003. This exhibition coincides with the publication of a major book on Bennett’s practice. Curator: Felicity Milburn

Book Launch

Graham Bennett – Around Every Circle

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū

A sumptuously illustrated portrait of an acclaimed New Zealand-based artist without compromise, who illuminates how we engage with our environment and each other. Three essays by accomplished writers and five image sequences elucidate a practice shaped by curiosity and connection spanning more than five decades. Bennett adds personal insights in an account of the intertwining of art and life.

After more than three years work Graham Bennett – Around Every Circle is complete, with 700 copies beautifully printed and available from Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, The Diversion Gallery Picton, Milford Galleries, booksellers and this website.

Ron Sang Publications: Hardback, 300 x 300 mm, 300 pages, sumptuously illustrated. ISBN 978-0-473-50472-4