Blue Cloud, 1996

Something that arrives, is there,

and moves away as it came.

Substance.

Glass, argon, electricity, material

of space and light

Defining a mark in space that

complements and celebrates the

same space the mark occupies.

Green Waterfall, 1996

A cool fresh, bright energy

at the end of a long view.

A turbulence of light and colour

at the end of a long view.

A contrast after verticals and hoirzontals

at the end of a long view.……Blue Cloud, Green Waterfall brings together a selection of works by esteemed New Zealand artist Bill Culbert made between 1974 and 2012 alongside previously unexhibited archival material dating from 1963 onwards. Though notable predominantly for his fluorescent tube and found-object sculptures and installations, this exhibition demonstrates Culbert’s manifold observations and articulations of light through lesser-known works, illustrating his wide-ranging use of media including painting, drawing, photography, engraving, assemblage and holography. Over the course of his 60-year career, Culbert maintained an unwavering address of light and its formative shaping of existence and experience. Taken from notebook entries made by Culbert in 1996, the exhibition title Blue Cloud, Green Waterfall speaks to Culbert’s exploratory, joyous and poetic investigations of light as natural phenomena and its concomitance with the existential registers of perception, time and change.