You are not permitted to download, save or email this image. Visit image gallery to purchase the image.
Since 1966 the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship has nurtured New Zealand visual artistic endeavour. Authors Priscilla Pitts and Andrea Hotere have teamed up to chart the fellowship’s half century in ‘Undreamed of ... 50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship’ — a vibrant survey of the artists and their work. In this extract they profile the 1995 fellow Jeff Thomson — a curious tale of corrugated iron and pedestrianism. Liquid Filter Element
Inevitably, when we think about Jeff Thomson’s art, we associate him with improbable appearances of wild animals and farm livestock in urban parks and gardens — elephants, tigers, penguins, cows. The genesis of his rural mailboxes, most resulting from owners he approached during a series of walks through the countryside, is now the stuff of legend: the itinerant artist, with a keen eye and mangled feet, plying his trade in unexpected places to an often unlikely audience and, later, cruising the highways in his corrugated-iron-clad Holden station wagon.
Jeff Thomson But Thomson is nothing if not versatile, endowed not only with practical resourcefulness but also with an endlessly fertile imagination. So perhaps we should not be surprised to find how much of his work has focused on the domestic context and on design and craft forms not commonly associated with working metal. His 1994 DahliaSuite can be seen as a key work in bringing traditionally "masculine" and "feminine" elements together. This collection of downpipes, guttering, roofing iron and other plumbing items, screen printed with a luscious floral design, leans casually against the wall, looking more like rolls and drapes of gorgeously flower-patterned fabric than pieces of roofing and rainwater systems.
The following year, in Dunedin, Thomson continued to use plumbing components. Working with a commercial roofing company and using removable plastic film to protect the screen-printed surfaces before shaping them, he was able to extend the range of surfaces he could print on. He discovered Lysaght’s Referee: A handbook of useful information and began applying enlarged diagrams from the publication to roofing iron, gutters, flues, vents and ridge caps. For his exhibition at the end of his fellowship year, he tackled the daunting height of the Hocken gallery by erecting scaffolding and clamping his works to it in the manner of a building product display. He even found a way to turn the standard roofer’s lead-head nails into works of art by casting their heads in a wide variety of shapes. Ralph Hotere saw these in Thomson’s studio and fastened on to their possibilities: the cross-shaped nail heads Thomson cast for him became a signature element of Hotere’s work.
Thomson took the plumbing concept a step further when he was the 2000 Tylee Cottage Artist in Residence in Whanganui. Here he undertook real-life commissions, personalising the various components with designs tailored to the homeowners’ interests: flowers, computer parts, classical figures, pages from a book on undersea life. He incorporated some of these patterns in his Wendy house-sized ShowHome (2002), and added domestic imagery drawn from textiles and wallpaper to the walls and chimney.
Not content with printing fabric designs on metal, Thomson has worked out ingenious ways to fabricate the very forms and textures of various textiles in metal. He made his first kete in 1990, weaving narrow strips of corrugated iron, and in 1995 constructed a particularly beautiful and elaborate one from a variety of steel meshes. In 2011, he elevated his weaving to a grand scale in Carpet, made for Waiheke Island’s Sculpture on the Gulf — a huge installation that carpeted an area among trees and, appropriately, flax bushes. With the use of a machine that he invented himself, he makes giant tubes of French knitting; and he loops fine plaits and ropes of iron into deceptively loose-looking coils and braids. His 2005 sculpture Contour (also for Sculpture on the Gulf) rolls down the hillside like a giant unfurling ribbon.
Thomson’s also a lacemaker extraordinaire. Art collector Milly Paris famously commissioned a set of metal curtains for her Wellington home in 1994. Thomson produced a scalloped lace pelmet and curtains with tie-backs, the corrugations of the metal replicating the folds of curtains. He’s gone on to create an extraordinary variety of works inspired by pieces of lace, doilies, and even sweet wrappers — all fabricated from metal. In some, the pattern is a simple sequence of diagonal cuts, while others are unbelievably detailed and delicate. Some are fabricated from sheet metal, others from corrugated steel, often formed into spiral shapes that curl into the space like giant lace ribbons and create intricate shadows on the walls. Some resemble a sampler of lace patterns, others hint at old, crumbling textiles, including the crochet-edged mats our grandmothers used to make. From the great outdoors and the roofs over our heads, to the interiors of our homes — as these have inspired Jeff Thomson, so too has he enriched them with his work. — Priscilla Pitts
Jeff Thomson never dreams of corrugated iron, but has spent much of his waking life dreaming up new things to do with the ubiquitous Kiwi building material. Thomson grew up in Castor Bay on Auckland’s North Shore.
"It was a really idyllic childhood."
His father, Tiger Thomson, worked on ships, but came ashore to parent his four children. Thomson senior was a skilled craftsman, creating scale-sized pieces of furniture for his children and model ships in his shed. Young Jeff spent much of his time pottering around in that space.
"I have been inspired by him."
"When I was quite young I was encouraged in drawing and painting ... Our youth was spent beach swimming, sailing ... We did cubs and scouts ... I used to really struggle at school because I was dyslexic. My mother, Molly, who was a teacher, realised this, and got me some help."
He attended Westlake Boys’ High School where he encountered artist and art teacher Paul Dibble.
"He was very inspiring — his enthusiasm. He was anti-establishment; he was an unusual teacher."
Thomson completed a BA in fine arts at the Elam School of Fine Arts, focusing on painting and screen-printing, under the auspices of Don Binney, Robert Ellis and Garth Tapper.
"I really enjoyed screen-printing, but after three years I didn’t know what I was doing. It was a hard time. I felt like most of my friends from school were out working, and doing careers ... "
Uncertain of how to proceed, in 1980 he took a year off and went to Dunedin, where he ended up in Portobello, living on about $10 a week, half of which was spent on rent.
"It was a pivotal year ... I spent [it] painting and print-making. Every Sunday I’d walk into Dunedin. I had this philosophy that if you walked you were more likely to get a ride."
Walking long distances became something of a philosophical journey.
"I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was like you were walking parallel with the realism of life in your own time warp. It was always a bit strange going back into society ... Walking made me feel quite free."
He once walked from Dunedin to Christchurch to attend his brother’s wedding.
Returning to Auckland for a fourth year at art school, Thomson received support from Binney for his pedestrian-based methodology.
"I started playing about with letterboxes."
Thomson walked from Bulls to New Plymouth, a distance of around 200km, delivering 350 letters along the way. Seven people responded to his offer to make a personalised sculpture for their letterbox.
"They might be Ayrshire breeders or sharemilkers — I would do a drawing of every single letterbox and take some photos, so if they wanted something, I’d be organised."
These first pieces were cut from plywood and painted. Thomson was seeking an audience for his art and what began with letterboxes grew into sculptures on request. Thomson attended Auckland Teachers’ Training College in 1982, then taught at his old school, Westlake Boys’ High. In 1984, he exhibited his letterboxes at the Bowen Galleries in Wellington, including for the first time one small corrugated-iron cow. This led to a further commission, for an elephant, which attracted the attention of arts patron James (later Sir James) Wallace, who commissioned a herd of corrugated elephants for his fenceline.
By 1985, Thomson was teaching at Dannevirke High School and continuing his walks, on which he would observe and record found objects, signs and markers, describing them as roadside "jewellery".
When James Mack, director of the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, asked him to apply for a residency, "it was like a dream come true", but at the last minute a council decision reversed the offer.
"They were concerned that [corrugated iron] was a cheap and nasty material and didn’t want it around their city."
Thomson’s approach has involved taking his art to the people. When he undertook his second "big walk", between Woodville and Masterton (80km) he asked people along the way what they wanted him to make. The response rate increased dramatically.
Thomson became the Frances Hodgkins fellow in 1995.
"I was really surprised when I found out I’d been accepted."
By this time he had rolled, woven and folded corrugated iron; now he also printed on it. At the end of the year, he filled the Hocken Gallery with a flowing installation of his work. Also that year, for a show at Otago Polytechnic, he customised lead-head nails, smelting them into teapot, cup and saucer shapes. With his partner Shona Cameron, whom he met in Dunedin, Thomson moved to Helensville, northwest of Auckland, and established a remarkable home and studio inside a large warehouse building. From here he has sent artworks around New Zealand and the world. — Andrea Hotere
Zoo Wire Rope Mesh - Extracted from Undreamed of ... 50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship by Priscilla Pitts and Andrea Hotere. Published by Otago University Press. $59.95