Venice
Art Biennale 2013: National Pavilions
Around Town – New Zealand. Celebrated
New Zealand sculptor, photographer and installation artist Bill Culbert is
exhibiting his work at the New Zealand Pavilion situated inside the Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà, right on the lagoons busy Riva degli
Schiavoni. Entitled Front Door Out Back, the installations are be
anchored firmly in the domestic world, with common objects such as tables,
chairs, wardrobes and plastic containers featuring prominently in many works.
But these objects are altered and energized, lifted out of the ordinary, by
Culbert’s signature medium – light. Fluorescent light tubes in abundance draw
viewers through the spaces, flowing around, over and often right through
Culbert’s pieces of furniture and coloured plastic vessels – objects that
Culbert refers to as both "stoppages and transporters".
Above. Bill Culbert, Daylight Flotsam Venice, 2013.
Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà – New Zealand
Pavilion. Bill Culbert, Bebop, 2013. The most ambitious of these works is a
20-metre-long overhead light sculpture, which will send gleaming steel chairs
and tables tumbling through space in a torrent of fluorescent tubes.
Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà – New Zealand
Pavilion. Bill Culbert’s Front Door Out
Back installation. Bill Culbert, Straight, 2013.