The relationship between architecture and art is explored in Paul Cullen’s installation Recent Discoveries, a work commissioned for the Fisher Gallery.
Paul Cullen’s sculpture explores the logic of buildings, scale and perspective. In a general sense, he uses architecture as a metaphor and a tool to explore the processes of thought in drawing and sculpture. The work is formal, austere and aesthetically monumental.
Recent Discoveries has been commissioned for the Fisher Gallery sculpture court. This exhibition uses the aspects of the site in which it is to be placed, the context and materials of the sculpture court itself, as part of the artwork. Cullen’s list of materials already on site include: plantings, paving stones, external gallery walls, windows, entrances and exits to the courtyard, doors into/out of the gallery, the gallery furniture, the gallery site/location and audience.
Recent Discoveries inverts the intention of the sculpture court with the Fisher Gallery foyer. For the water starved court (and by implication Auckland as well, given our water crisis), Cullen is constructing a pool-side atmosphere. The conceptual outside pool is sourced through the foyer. Pipes normally hidden outside are built into the artwork, participating in the movement of the sculpture from the inside to the outside of the court.
“Installation work utilising foyer and courtyard of the Fisher Gallery, Pakuranga. Components of the work were dispersed between the interior and exterior of the gallery. Circulating water was central to this work, pumped from a cardboard box in the interior to a glass tank under a table in the courtyard. Water sounds generated by the ‘fountain’ attached to the table were relayed via an amplifier to speakers in a cardboard box in the foyer. The amplifier was attached to a chair seat on the ceiling of the foyer.”
– Paul Cullen
Te Tuhi wishes to acknowledge the Paul Cullen Archive who have generously provided additional archival material on this exhibition.
Download
→ Paul Cullen: Recent Discoveries, 1994, publication