Len Lye Foundation announces first Evan Webb Award winner

“We received a fantastic array of interesting entries which addressed Lye’s films, sculpture and aesthetics,” says Len Lye Foundation Trustee Roger Horrocks.

“Raymond presented a solidly researched essay titled Len Lye: Animation, Automatism and Surrealism, which has been independently accepted for publishing.”

“Beyond the Award a number of valid and exciting exhibition proposals and ideas for future research have also emerged through this process, demonstrating that Len Lye and his legacy remains a current and vibrant resource for new critical and creative thinking, even now, 44-years after the artist's death,” Roger says.

Raymond is a Senior Lecturer in the Art History programme at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests span the culture and politics of surrealism, the history of French avant-garde movements, and the history of modernism and its discontents.

The Evan Webb award, offered by the Len Lye Foundation, commemorates the artist and Foundation Director Evan Webb (1952-2023) who was a key figure in the research and restoration of the work of Len Lye. The annual award is open to any researcher and gives $1500 to the best original contribution to Lye scholarship across a range of categories.

Margreet Vissers, Evan Webb's wife, has welcomed the award, noting the recipient's alignment to Evan's own scholarly work on Lye. 

"Evan would be pleased. He gave much of his time and creativity to the reconstruction of the kinetic sculptures, but he took great pleasure in the scholarship of the writings about Len's work. He was most proud of his own original writings on Lye and of the promotion of Len's entire oeuvre of films, paintings, photograms, writings and sculptures, undertaken together with the Len Lye Foundation." Margreet says.

Both Margreet and the Foundation offer their congratulations to Raymond on winning the first Evan Webb Award.