Len Lye: Four Fountains
25 Jul 2015 - 04 Sep 2016
Fountain is presented here as four variations on a theme, including a new member of the Fountain family of works, the eight-metre tall version engineered by the Len Lye Foundation from Lye’s extensive archive of notes and designs.
“The motion I am programming will be more vividly empathic when blown up in scale” - Len Lye
Len Lye and Fountain II, New York, circa 1970's. Len Lye Foundation Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre
Fountain III (1977). Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Collection
Among the earliest of Lye's 'tangible motion sculptures', Fountain became a work he returned to throughout the 1960's and 1970's with numerous variations in collections around the world.
Performing alongside three earlier versions of Fountain, a new member of this family of work arrives in 2015 with the eight-metre tall version - Fountain IV - engineered by the Len Lye Foundation based on Lye's detailed design drawings and notes. From the gentle to the sublime, Lye's ambitious projects are finally realised as he envisaged - for the 21st Century.
Len Lye: Four Fountains opens a new chapter in experiencing Len Lye's works by remembering the past. In homage to Lye's performance of his 'tangible motion sculpture' at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on 5 April 1961, these Fountains perform as a Fountain of the early 1960's did that evening, under coloured light and accompanied by music from one of Lye's favourite artists, the French composer Pierre Boulez's Le marteau sans maitre (The hammer without a master, 1955).
The gathering of the Four Fountains will create an enchanting environment we hope to be memorable for years to come.