On my bookshelf
Len Lye, by Roger Horrocks
I first Encountered Len Lye’s films during a staff induction at the National Film and Television Archive where conservators were bringing vibrant colour back to his 1935 abstract short A Colour Box.
I was blown away seeing for the first time a film that had been made by drawing directly onto the filmstrip. I came across Lye’s kinetic sculptures when travelling in his native New Zealand: the immense red stalk of the New Plymouth’s Wind Wand and the Water Whirler in Wellington.
I took a week off to volunteer at the Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth, which houses Lye’s archive, revamping the Lye section of their website. My reward was an afternoon spent in the basement with Lye’s drawings, maquettes and working film strips.
Horrocks’s biography tells the life story of this visionary artist, from small-town beginnings in New Zealand through to his time in London, where he fell among the interwar bohemian set of Robert Graves and Dylan Thomas. A pioneer in abstract film and kinetic sculpture, he ended his days in New York still trying to realise his powerful art.
Lye’s work continues to fascinate: a recent exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham brought some of his sculpture to the UK, and a DVD collection of his films is in the offing. His work, and the story of his life, which has followed me from film archives to contemporary art, still inspires me.
Danny Birchall is the website editor at the Wellcome Collection, London
museumcultures.wordpress.com
I was blown away seeing for the first time a film that had been made by drawing directly onto the filmstrip. I came across Lye’s kinetic sculptures when travelling in his native New Zealand: the immense red stalk of the New Plymouth’s Wind Wand and the Water Whirler in Wellington.
I took a week off to volunteer at the Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth, which houses Lye’s archive, revamping the Lye section of their website. My reward was an afternoon spent in the basement with Lye’s drawings, maquettes and working film strips.
Horrocks’s biography tells the life story of this visionary artist, from small-town beginnings in New Zealand through to his time in London, where he fell among the interwar bohemian set of Robert Graves and Dylan Thomas. A pioneer in abstract film and kinetic sculpture, he ended his days in New York still trying to realise his powerful art.
Lye’s work continues to fascinate: a recent exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham brought some of his sculpture to the UK, and a DVD collection of his films is in the offing. His work, and the story of his life, which has followed me from film archives to contemporary art, still inspires me.
Danny Birchall is the website editor at the Wellcome Collection, London
museumcultures.wordpress.com