Len Lye Centre

Official Name: Len Lye Centre

Location: New Plymouth, New Zealand

Type: Art museum

The Len Lye Centre, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, is the country’s only display building dedicated to a single artist. Lye was born in New Zealand in 1901 and lived most of his life in other countries. As its name suggests, the centre was built to display his works.

The building has 20 14-metre-high concrete columns wrapped in stainless steel. The steel is highly polished and acts as a mirror for what is around: other buildings, passing traffic, pedestrians. The choice of stainless steel reflects the artist’s preference for the material and the importance of the product to the region as a whole.

Visitors access the various parts of the inside of the museum by going up ramps. An education room caters to student needs year-round. Next to that is a 62-seat cinema, which shows Lye’s hand-painted films. Further up the ramp, visitors come to a 9-metre-high gallery that contains the artist’s large kinetic work. Another gallery can be found at the top of the ramp.

History

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Lye moved to Sydney when he was 21, and then to London, where he stayed for nearly 20 years, before settling in New York and gaining U.S. citizenship. He travelled in the South Pacific and developed an appreciation for the cultures of the various peoples who lived in that area, notably the Samoan and Australian Aboriginal peoples. The influences of those peoples and of New Zealand’s native people, the Māori, can be found in Lye’s works.

During a visit by Lye in 1977, New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery offered to build large-scale versions of sculptures for which Lye had not acquired the resources. When the artist died in 1980, he bequeathed all of his major works to the New Plymouth gallery. In 2015, a new home for Lye’s works, the Len Lye Centre, opened.

Patterson Associates, based in Auckland, designed the building, using as a guiding principle something that Lye said in 1964: ‘Great architecture goes fifty-fifty with great art.’ Andrew Patterson’s firm, in particular, focused on creating an echo of great halls past, specifically the megaron, the great hall in an ancient Greek palace.

Len Lye Centre cost NZ$12.5 million to build. The centre and the adjoining gallery cost NZ$4 million to run. A report commissioned by the district council found that in 2016, the art gallery attracted 17,000 visitors from outside the region in 2016 and brought in NZ$7.4 million. In 2017, after canvassing public opinion, the district council abandoned free admission and instituted a NZ$15 entrance fee for out-of-town visitors. The plan was for $10 of each $15 admission fee to go for upkeep of the centre and for the other $5 to go to the Len Lye Foundation, another organisation set up to facilitate the display of Lye’s works.

Significance

Lye is famous for his sculptures. He called them Tangible Motion Sculptures because they were kinetic, or capable of being moved. The movement was part of the aesthetic, Lye thought. He made his first sculptures in the 1950s, when he was living in New York, and had his first major display at the Museum of Modern Art in 1961. The first group of his well-known sculptures date to that period: Fire Bush, Grass, Roundhead and Storm King. Bell Wand and Ribbon Snake (Convolutions) followed four years later. Fountain III (1976) became particularly well-known for its illusory depiction of a jet of water.

Most of his sculptures, though many were large, were designed to be shown indoors. Two well-known exceptions appeared well after his death. Along New Plymouth’s waterfront can be found Wind Wand, a 25-metre-tall fiberglass mast that glows red at night. Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, has the Water Whirler, a motorised fiberglass wand that appeared on the waterfront in 2006. Also displaying Len Lye sculptures are galleries and museums across America, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lye is perhaps best known for his sculpted works, but he was a pioneering filmmaker as well. Starting in 1929, Lye made films by painting directly onto the film canvas. The primary reason for this was that he couldn’t afford a camera; however, Lye the maverick wanted to try something different as well. One of his early films, The Colour Box (1935) won an award at an international cinema festival. Most of Lye’s films were animated. He also made documentaries, during World War II. He completed his last film, Particles in Space, in 1980, when he was 78. He died that year. The New Zealand Film Archive has the majority of his films, but the centre’s theatre shows a selection of Lye’s painted films. Lye was also a poet and a painter. The Lye Centre has a collection of these works.

The centre is known for its iconic look and feel and, especially, for the mirror-like exterior. The centre has also seen its share of controversy — not only over the price tag but also because of the way that the art works are displayed inside. Visitors to the centre will notice the wide open spaces that are meant to accentuate the building itself and create space for the art works, some of which are taller and/or wider than human-size, to inhabit. Critics of the centre note that a large number of art works are stored offsite and could be put on display in the currently unoccupied spaces in the various galleries.

Bibliography

Harvey, Helen. “Len Lye Centre: Still Controversial after all These Years.” Stuff, 17 Nov. 2017, https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/98863747/len-lye-centre-still-controversial-after-all-these-years. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.

Harvey, Justine. “Len Lye Centre.” Architecture Now, https://architecturenow.co.nz/articles/len-lye-centre/. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.

“Len Lye.” New Zealand History, 11 Nov. 2017, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/len-lye. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.

“Len Lye Centre/Patterson Associates.” ArchDaily, 4 Aug. 2015, https://www.archdaily.com/771278/len-lye-centre-patterson-associates. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.

Martin, Robin. “Controversial Gallery Contributes $7.4m to New Plymouth.” Radio New Zealand, 11 Nov. 2017. https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/343574/controversial-gallery-contributes-7-point-4m-to-new-plymouth. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.