Graham Bennett

Graham Bennett is probably best known in New Zealand for two very high profile sculptures – Reasons for Voyaging, the soaring seven-pillar installation outside the new Christchurch Art Gallery, and the Firefighters Memorial he was asked to create in Christchurch from steel girders, sent to him from the World Trade Centre ruins in New York.

Bennett’s sculpture is an evolution of ideas and philosophies based on concepts of voyaging, past present and future, connection between islands within the same ocean, connections between the primordial land and man’s temporary imposition on it, with our structures imposed on or cutting into the land, and particularly of connections and differences between cultures.

Often he considers questions of identity, and our sense of place. His work often features lines of latitude and longitude, the phases of the moon and passages of planets across the Earth, as followed by explorers through the Pacific, such as the Transit of Venus.

He uses impermanent manmade materials – like steel – against natural materials like rock and wood, to express those ideas. He was born in Nelson, the geographic centre of New Zealand, near the rocky Boulder Bank, and this has influenced his work. Faultlines and geothermal lines project out from New Zealand to places across the Pacific, with the concept that the waters that lap our shores, also break on their coast, and thus connect us.

Recent Work 

A recurring motif is based on the ‘orange peel segment’ flattened map of the world. Each segment is also the shape of a canoe or vessel; when standing vertically his pieces sometimes further suggest a human element. Recent works such as Extend have seen four of those segments brought together to form a pod shape, closed yet open in form, elegantly spilling air and light as they reach upwards and out.

He works on both an intimate and a grand scale with skill, precision and feeling. His Lines Extending Round is a beautiful limited edition work evolving from a residency at Kurashiki University in Japan where he created a stainless steel tower made of 4 of the segments of the globe, nearly four metres high. The limited edition work was initially for gifts for dignitaries and those who assisted in the making of the sculpture, but he decided to make a small number available in New Zealand. The open structure features a laser cut map of New Zealand on one side and Japan on the opposite side. Lines extend from the Kermadec trench and the Norfolk Ridge to connect New Zealand directly with Southern Japan and Kurashiki City.

Graham Bennett completes detailed studies on paper for each of his works, but these are not so much plans for sculpture as very beautiful paintings (such as Rites of Rights) conveying the feeling as much as the dimension and scale of the intended works. He also explores ideas through printmaking, often cutting and collaging so that each one is an individual piece.

More About the Artist 

Born in Nelson, Graham Bennett graduated from the Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1970. He has received numerous major NZ Arts awards including the Fellowship in Visual Arts from the NZ Arts Council in 1995 and the Asia 200 Foundation Grant the same year and in 1999. He was Principal Lecturer in the School of Art and Design at Christchurch Polytechnic for several years but has for some years been a full time artist with increasing demand for his work nationally and internationally. His work is included in several major outdoor private and public sculpture parks, and he has participated in major sculpture events here and overseas, particularly in Japan where he is held in high regard. He has exhibited over a dozen times in Japan, including invitations to two international exhibitions there, and has a work in the New Zealand embassy in Tokyo. He has twice featured as the cover story in World Sculpture News, and his story is one of being a New Zealander and of identity in the context of a vast world.

The book Reasons for Voyaging published for the Christchurch Art Gallery gateway sculpture gives further insight into the work of this extraordinary artist, as does the publication Journey: The story of the steel about the Firefighters Memorial by the Avon River in Christchurch.

Please contact us to confirm current prices: most prices are posted at the time of exhibition, and may be revised as the artists’ values increase.