Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand

A public art research partnership between Toi Rauwhārangi Massey University College of Creative Arts and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

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The book "WANTED: The Search for the modernist murals of E. Mervyn Taylor" was launched on 3 March 2018. Click through to the Massey University Press webpage for more information.

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In 1980 Guy made this wall sculpture for NZ Wire, in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. When we started this body of research in partnership with @artspace.aotearoa we didn’t know what had happened to this work, but the Artspace community came to the rescue.

Guy Ngan’s ‘Cityscape’ was originally commissioned in 1980 by the Eastern and Central Savings Bank for their Broadway Avenue premises in Te Papaioea Palmerston North. The sculpture was made from cast aluminium using the ‘lost polystyrene’ process involving carved polystyrene which dissolved during casting. The pieces were then interlocked and bolted together. Integrated lighting completed the overall effect.

Guy's stainless steel sculpture for the Aotea Lagoon Rose Garden in Porirua was made by Chubb Lock and Safe in 1979. We don’t know a great deal about the circumstances of its commissioning, however a Rotary International logo attached to it suggests they may have commissioned the work.

Guy worked with architect Ron Sang once again in 1977, this time on a fitout of the Bank of New Zealand’s Onehunga East branch. Ngan’s mural, now lost, was painted on wooden panels that spanned two walls (as per usual, any intel on what happened to it is most welcome).

In the mid-1970s the new Beehive building was well underway. It was decided that the landmark parliamentary building ought to have a large wall-hanging in its main entrance foyer. Fifteen of New Zealand’s leading weavers were invited to submit a proposal for the job, including respected fibre-artist Joan Calvert. Calvert invited Guy Ngan to develop a design and the pair’s proposal was a winner: a huge hanging consisting of six adjacent panels, each 2.4 metres square. Bursting with colour, "Forest In The Sun" evoked the experience of walking through native bush and being dazzled by sunlight filtering down through the tree canopy.

From 1976-1986 Guy Ngan served as Director of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington. Alongside this he kept his public art practice ticking along, beginning with his 1976 sculpture for the Eastern Hutt Rd Roundabout, at the foot of his home suburb: Stokes Valley, Lower Hutt.

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Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand

A public art research partnership between Toi Rauwhārangi Massey University College of Creative Arts and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

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