Tubular Constructions

At 80 years old and with a distinguished artistic career now stretching to more than six decades behind him, Mervyn Williams has boldly entered a new phase of development with Late Harvest, an exhibition of sculptures, along with selected earlier works in two dimensions (including paintings and prints).

The Jonathan Grant Gallery is showing paintings and prints while the sculptures—a mixture of freestanding and wall pieces—are presented at Artis Gallery. The focus in this essay is on the new work in three dimensions.

While most of the sculptures were made in the last two or three years it would be inaccurate to describe these as the first works by Williams in three dimensions; indeed one bronze included (Chatterbox) is dated 2011. As far back as 1988–89 he had experimented with three-dimensional works when he was artist-in-residence at Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery. During this time he made a large body of work utilising driftwood and other flood-carried detritus from the riverbanks and beaches near the city. This was shown at exhibitions at the Sarjeant (Points of Departure, 1989) and at Auckland’s Gow Langsford Gallery (Wood Works, Whanganui, 1989).