Bill culbert biography
- In 1968, he begins making the electric-light sculptures that will become his forte.
- William Franklin Culbert MNZM (23 January 1935 – 28 March 2019) was a New Zealand artist, notable for his use of light in painting, photography, sculpture and.
- Early Life and Career.
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Bill Culbert
Bill Culbert (1935 – 2019) left New Zealand in 1957 to study at the Royal College of Art, London. Culbert has had more than 100 solo exhibitions at major institutions in New Zealand, England, Europe, the USA and Australia. In 2013 Culbert was New Zealand’s representative at the 55th Venice Biennale.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 1995-2018
2018
Desk Lamp, Crash, Hopkinson Mossman, Wellington (solo)
Time Tables, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (solo)
Colour Theory, Window Mobile, Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland (solo)
2017
Poor Timing, Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland (group)
2016
Central Station, The Return, Andata Ritorino, Geneva (solo)
The Key to the Fields (with Andrew Barber), Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland (two-person)
2015
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, France, (solo)
Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland (solo)
National Art School Gallery (NAS), Sydney (solo)
2014
Château des Adhémar, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Montélimar (solo)
Nada se detiene, Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida (group)
Galerie Catherine Issert, Saint-Paul de Vence (group)
Doble dirección, Centre d’Art la
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Portrait of the artist as a dead man
For Jerrom, who trained in art history and museum heritage, taking on a vital role in the accession of Culbert’s studio has been a trial by fire. His duties with the estate encompass electrician, tax accountant, motorist, writer and archivist. “The Culbert estate is so wide and varied that the way of storing one facet of it, like the photographs, is completely turned upside down if you try to apply it to something else, like the exhibition posters.” Stringent itemisation means Jerrom knows roughly what each box contains, and the layout of the storage locker is etched into his brain.
When I first approached FJM, the gallery expressed concern about publicising the contents of the storage unit. They worried the public might perceive the reference objects and unfinished tests as a pile of old junk. Visiting the site, it is evident that the storage unit is less a junk shop; more a magician’s toolbox.
The artist’s studio can be said to give insight into the artist’s fundamental nature; what really made the artist tick. The same may be true of th
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Painter and artist using a range of freestanding objects and light installations. He attended Canterbury University School of Art, in New Zealand, 1953–6. Won a travelling scholarship in 1957, and attended the Royal College of Art, 1957–60, where he gained a silver medal for painting. He won first prize in the Open Painting Competition, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, in 1964, four years later gaining another prize. Was artist-in-residence at Museum of Holography, New York, in 1985. The year after, Culbert had a retrospective at ICA. In 1997, there was an exhibition at Serpentine Gallery Lawn. His dealer in London, where he lived, was Victoria Miro. Culbert’s work took a profound shift in the mid-1960s, when he changed from painting to using such items as a light bulb-holder, a light bulb and a jug to create his work.
Royal College of Art and Arts Council hold examples.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
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