Interview
Gregor Kregar: Reflective Lullaby

Gregor Kregar: Reflective Lullaby

Justin Paton: As everyone who has seen your works at Christchurch Airport will know, you often make big sculptures with a geometric quality. Gnomes, however large, aren't the first things viewers might expect you to be interested in. What's the appeal of these figures for you?
Gregor Kregar: I'm interested reinterpreting mundane objects, shapes, situations or materials. In my large geometric works I do this by creating complex structures out of basic shapes—triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons. And with the gnomes I am interested in how something that is usually made out of plastic or concrete and is associated with a low, kitsch aesthetic can be transformed into an arresting monumental sculpture.

Notes
Populate! update #30 (Tin men)

Populate! update #30 (Tin men)

On 10 May 2063, Christchurch Art Gallery's fiftieth birthday, we'll qualify for gold. On its twenty-fifth birthday, in 2038, we'll find ourselves in the realm of silver.

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Populate! update #27 (Night visions)

Populate! update #27 (Night visions)

Enlarging the circuit of nocturnal Populate! works (see also Steve Carr's Majo on Worcester Boulevard, Tony Oursler's flickering Incandescence on Madras Street, and the awesome Oursler gallery headbutt blogged by Felicity this morning), here's Ronnie's Comin' Down wearing its new nocturnal colours. Think holograms, night vision goggles, ectoplasm, little (or big) green men, and Martian beams descending from the big dark Canterbury skies. (Thanks Chris Pole for these photos.)

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Populate! update #23 (Bods in boxes)

Populate! update #23 (Bods in boxes)

Here's something the exhibitions team just popped (sorry: the punnage will stop soon) open: two big boxes inhabited by two big bodies.

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Populate! update #24 (Masking tape monster)

Populate! update #24 (Masking tape monster)

The joys of working with a lot of masking tape? Getting to make a masking tape monster.

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Populate! update #19 (beyond belief)

Populate! update #19 (beyond belief)

"When people stop believing in God," said G.K. Chesterton, "they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything."

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Populate! update #17 (How to make a narthex)

Populate! update #17 (How to make a narthex)

Saturday afternoon at Christchurch Art Gallery's 209 Tuam Street outpost and Jess Johnson's Wurm Whorl Narthex is on the grow. Only two days into a six-day install, the hand-painted backdrop is already a treat for the eyes, with green (not red) tape masking the walls in readiness for the next layer of colour. Views from the installation in progress (with the Gallery's Scott Jackson in the last photo)...

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Populate! update #15 (wrapped)

Populate! update #15 (wrapped)

You might look a little frowny too, if you'd just been covered in bubble wrap.

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Populate! update #11 (Comin' Down)

Populate! update #11 (Comin' Down)

Putting up Ronnie van Hout's Comin' Down in the early morning of Tuesday April 30. Big ups (so to speak) to Sean, Chris, Rebekkah, Simon, Nathan, Francis, Ronnie, Sam, the crane guys and everyone else involved. (And John Collie for the photos.)

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Populate! update #10 (body building)

Populate! update #10 (body building)

The Rolleston, Scott and Godley statues may have toppled in the February 2011 earthquake. But never fear. In the Van Hout 'laboratory' in Christchurch Art Gallery's foyer, Ronnie, with the help of his brother Francis, is building another body for the depopulated inner city. One of the Gallery's tenth-birthday Populate! projects, it's going out -- and up -- very soon. Watch the rooftops round 209 Tuam...

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