Glen Hayward | I don’t want you to worry about me
06.12.13 - 31.01.14
Starkwhite is pleased to present I don’t want you to worry about me, I have met some Beautiful People, a project produced by Glen Hayward during his Rita Angus Residency in 2012 and exhibited at the City Gallery Wellington and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu’s project space in 2013.
Hayward is known for his sculptures of everyday, mass-produced items. Carved from wood and painted exactly as they were as found objects, they masquerade as the real. Aaron Lister, curator of Hayward’s exhibition at the City Gallery Wellington, says: “Hayward’s acts of making, re-making and re-presentation variously render these objects and the world they belong to strange, hilarious or threatening. These objects are returned to the world, but now as simulations that perfectly replicate the original yet are devoid of any utilitarian or functional purpose they might once have held. Hayward’s practice endlessly upsets our relationship to the things that surround us, disrupting those divisions we make between art and lived experience.”
With his solo exhibition I don’t want you to worry about me, I have met some Beautiful People, Hayward turns his hand to the cubicle spaces of the white-collar worker. However, this is not just any cubicle, but a faithful recreation of the iconic office scene from The Matrix, in wood. The film’s Mr Anderson has clocked out, but leaves behind those lingering questions about what is real and what is illusory, between virtual experience and physical experience, individual agency and social control, issues that flow through The Matrix and Hayward’s practice.
Glen Hayward completed his doctoral dissertation at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2005. Recent solo shows include: I don’t want you to worry about me I have met some Beautiful People, City Gallery Wellington and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu(2013); Mirrorworld, McCahon house open studio, Auckland Arts Festival (2011); For want of a nail, Tauranga Art Gallery (2011); The Island of Wen, Alties Spitel, Solothurn, Switzerland (2011): and Live Transmission, Starkwhite, Auckland (2009).
Group shows include: The Obstinate object, curators Aaron Lister and Abbey Cunnae, City Gallery, Wellington (2012); Collected fictions, curators Kim Paton and Gareth Williams, Waikato Art Museum (2012); Debuilding, curator Justin Paton, Christchurch City Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu,Christchurch (2011); Song of the woods, curator Greg Donson, Sarjeant Gallery Wanganui (2011); Call Waiting, curator Alexa Johnston, Auckland City Art Gallery (NEW), Auckland (2010); F is for fake, curator Emma Bugden Te Tuhi, Pakuranga (2009); Woodwork, 5 Artists working in wood, curated by Greg Donson, Sarjeant Galley, Wanganui (2008); Reboot, The Jim and Mary Barr Collection, curator Justin Paton, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery and Wellington City Gallery (2006-2007); and Vanishing point: representing the invisible, curators Jim Barr & Mary Barr, Starkwhite,Auckland (2005).
Recent Awards and Residencies include Four plinths sculpture project Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand and Wellington Sculpture Trust award for Rita used to grow her own vegetables (2012); Rita Angus Fellow (2012); McCahon House Residency, Titirangi (2011); and Kaipara Foundation Award, Switzerland Residency, Wallace Art Awards, Auckland (2011).