Robin Gibson Gallery / Terry Stringer

Terry Stringer
Our Home is our Childhood

4 - 29 November, 2006

Tomb of Picasso

Terry Stringer is a leading New Zealand sculptor. He trained at Elam School of Fine Arts graduating with Honours in 1967 and in the following years received virtually every significant scholarship and award available to New Zealand artists. In the late 1970s he was awarded the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship three times.

He is a key figure in the history of art in New Zealand, a sculptor with an established reputation. This was acknowledged in 2003 when he was the recipient of the country's national honour, the ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit).

His signature works have become synonymous with high profile public sites throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand, including The Risen Christ in Christchurch's Cathedral Square, his Grand Head in Wellington.
He has just completed The World Grasped for Newmarket, Auckland.

In addition to public and private sculpture commissions, Terry Stringer has been involved in various theatrical projects. Downstage Theatre, Wellington commissioned him to design sets and costumes for Cabaret, and the Royal New Zealand Ballet for Images of Desire.

Throughout his career Stringer has exhibited extensively, with solo shows in Auckland, Sydney, Los Angeles and London. He lives and works at his sculpture park Zealandia, north of Auckland, New Zealand.

Dr Robin Woodward
Department of Art History
University of Auckland

Artist's Statement

From the window of my studio the craggy island of Little Barrier sits across the horizon. My neighbours say its outline is Queen Victoria lying in state. In identifying this, the eye reads the range of hills as a narrative form, instead of merely a blue misty shape.

This relates to the intellectual process of an artists. To make the human image the subject in an art work is to use that part of the brain that assesses the most subtle of signals. We have this specialised skill, and we delight in exercising it in the game of art, where the personality of a figure and the particulars of its situation can tell a detailed story.

When I make the sculpture of a person, the details I create have implications whether I am conscious of them or not. History and fashion exist in layers of meaning, and the piece is located in time and place. In a lifetime of figure making, my work reflects my admiration of other artists, my memories of events in my life, and my attempts to give shape and meaning to this, my experience.

With a statue such as Diana Surprised While Bathing, I have made a head of two faces framed by a jointed arm, giving the work the eccentricity of the provincial folk artist. But my piece tells the classical story of a goddess seen by a hunter and continues a tradition of generations of sculpture making that I would wish to acknowledge.

Terry Stringer
November 2006.

Sign / Nature

Remembering Thinking of Oneself

Diana Surprised While Bathing

The Poetry of Nature

Two Faced Study

David & Michelangelo

Adore

Monument Head

click here to see images from previous shows

Terry Stringer

1946 1953 1967
Born Redruth, Cornwall, England
Arrived New Zealand
Graduated DFA (Hons) University of Auckland School of Fine Arts

Works held in all major New Zealand collections

Lives and works at Zealandia Sculpture Garden, Mahurangi West, North Auckland.

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS and AWARDS

1977/81/82 1979 1987 1988 1991 1999 2000 2003 2003 2005 2006 2006

QE II Arts Council Awards Aotea Square Water Sculpture, Auckland 'Grand Head' Victoria Street, Wellington 'White Lightning' Tutanekai Mall, Rotorua 'Kiri Te Kanawa' Aotea Centre, Auckland 'Risen Christ' Cathedral Square, Christchurch Portrait Sculpture Award, New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington ONZM for services to sculpture, New Years Honours list 'Faith, Hope, and Love' St Cuthbert's College, Auckland 'The Fates, Peter Craze Memorial' Ealing, London 'The World Grasped' Newmarket, Auckland 'Te Kawau Thinks of Queen Victoria' Selwyn College, Auckland

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1975 1978 1978 1981 1981 1981 1981 1981 1982 1982 1982 1982 1986 1988 1989 1994 1996 1998 1998 1999 2001 2001 2002 2002 2002 2003 2003 2004 2005 2006 2006 2006

Barry Lett Galleries, and subsequent exhibitions, Auckland 'Bronzes & Painted Wood Sculpture' Waikato Art Museum, Hamilton Hogarth Galleries, and subsequent exhibitions, Sydney, Australia 'Living Room' Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North 'Living Room' Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui 'Living Room' Dowse Art Gallery, Lower Hutt Janne Land Gallery, and subsequent exhibitions, Wellington Brooke/Gifford Gallery, and subsequent exhibitions, Christchurch 'Wrap Around Sculpture' National Art Gallery, Wellington 'Seen' Denis Cohn Gallery, and subsequent exhibitions, Auckland Ankrum Galleries, and subsequent exhibitions, Los Angeles, USA 'Recent Works' Rotorua City Gallery, Rotorua 'Aspects of Recent NZ Art, Sculpture 1' Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland Gow, Langsford Gallery, and subsequent exhibitions, Auckland 'Figures in a Landscape' Fisher Gallery, Auckland Hawke's Bay Museum, Napier 'All We Are One Body' Anna Bibby Gallery, and subsequent exhibitions, Auckland 'Personal Museum' Bishop Suter Gallery, Nelson 'Personal Museum' Hawke's Bay Exhibition Centre 'Behind the Studio Screen' Janne Land Gallery, Wellington 'Living in my Head' te tuhi, Auckland 'The Palace of the Mind' Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch and FHE Gallery, Auckland 'A Little Theatre Work for the Hands' Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney 'A Little Theatre Work for the Hands' Simmons Gallery, London 'A Little Theatre Work for the Hand' Janne Land Gallery, Wellington Going Home' Milford Galleries, Dunedin 'The Privileged Eye', Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney 'The Architecture of Memory' Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch 'The Head is a Theatre of Dreams' Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland, USA 'About Face' Black Barn Gallery, Hawke's Bay. 'A Life in Sculpture' Webb's, Auckland 'Our Home is Our Childhood' Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1978 1981 1990 1991 1994 1995 1998 1999 1999 1999 2001 2002 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006

Mildura Sculpture Triennial Auckland City Art Gallery, 'Recent Acquisitions, New Zealand Art' 'Medallions '90' Helsinki, 22nd Congress of International Medal Art 'Inheritance' Wellington City Art Gallery, Wellington 'Little Jewels' Arts Marketing Board, Wellington 'The Persuasion of the Real' Hawke's Bay Museum, Napier and tour '(Re)visioning the Real' Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland and tour 'The Shrine' Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland and tour 'Volume and Form' Singapore 'Face to Face' Auckland City Art Gallery 'Pacific Rim' McPherson Gallery, Auckland, and 'Pacific Rim' Simmons Gallery, London 'Connectedness' Hawke's Bay Museum, Napier 'Shapeshifter' New Zealand International Arts Festival, Wellington 'Sculpture Show' Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, Australia 'Sculpture on the Gulf' Waiheke Island, Auckland 'Summer Exhibition' Royal Academy of Art, London, England 'Shapeshifter' New Zealand International Arts Festival, Wellington


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