Past exhibitions -- 2002

LEN LYE
Experimental Filmmaker, Sculptor, Photographer and Writer

26 February - 20 April 2002

"..(I'm) interested in the business of energy and getting a feeling of zizz." Len Lye

Len Lye was an original, experimental and celebrated artist. Commemorating the centennial year of his birth, this exhibition is the first major exhibition of Lye's work to be seen in Australia. It is comprised of a large selection of his ground-breaking films, his exceptional photograms of colleagues and friends including Le Corbusier and Georgia O'Keefe, and the kinetic sculptures Roundhead, Universe and Grass.

Len Lye in Sydney c1925 Photo: Mary Brown Courtesy of Len Lye Foundation

Len Lye was born in New Zealand in 1901, and left for Australia in 1921. He studied Aboriginal art at the Australian Museum, and encountered Sydney artists such as Rayner Hoff, who carved a fine head of Lye that is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Between 1922 and 1923 he lived in Samoa until he was deported back to Sydney for living with the local population. In 1926 he left for London where he became part of the Seven and Five Society (Robert Graves, Laura Riding and Ben Nicholson amongst others). He moved to New York's Greenwich Village in 1944 to work on The March of Time films and became a leading figure in the kinetic art movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout the rest of his life he continued to develop both his film and kinetic work, all of which continued his ideas to do with figures in motion. Len Lye died in 1980, at the age of 78.

"Len Lye's theories and practice remained somewhat peripheral to the various avant-garde movements of the 20th century despite the artist's proximity to them and his friendships with many of the protagonists. At various times he was close to the Surrealists, Constructivists, the Russian avant-garde, Abstract Expressionists and so on. He was influenced by Futurism, Freud, jazz, Oceanic art, calligraphy, the Meyerhold theatre, but was primarily an autodidact, and for all his apparent gregariousness, something of a loner and a dreamer. Lye was driven to use whatever means - words, film, music, metal, kinetics, photography, batik - in order to realise a singular vision of a universal life force which he recognised as an appropriate subject for and object of art. For Lye, that force was made manifest in motion," said Judy Annear, Senior Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Curator of Len Lye. Lye's works in this exhibition play with the dynamics of movement through still and moving images and other mechanical means such as kinetic sculpture.

Len Lye is a joint exhibition between the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, supported by the Len Lye Foundation. The Len Lye Foundation is supported by Technix Group Limited.