Jeff Thomson

Water Lilies

2006

corrugated iron

Corrugated iron is sculptor Jeff Thomson’s signature material. He makes herds of cows, elephants, lawn mowers, even curtains, out of it. Thomson first embraced corrugated iron as his primary conceptual device some twenty years ago. Visiting landowners in the Wanganui district, he proposed altering letterboxes with corrugated iron embellishments that reflected the business or hobbies of the residents. Miniature sheep, motorbikes and hens began popping up on letterboxes across the region.

A strong kiwi vernacular has continued to characterize Thomson’s work. His subject matter and materials reflect the artist’s DIY aesthetic. Despite his art school training, Thomson’s fashioning of steel is largely self-taught. A master craftsman, he transforms conventional trade materials by constantly challenging their physical possibilities. ‘I grind it, I curve it, I stack it, I cut it, I print on it, I even chop the iron into strips and weave it. I’m always conscious of finding new ways of working and using the material. When I do an exhibition I try to do something different or try and find a new direction.*

Thomson’s material is often his subject and Water Lilies is no exception. In this, his first water-based project, Thomson takes sources as disparate as Monet’s water lilies and Rosalie Gascoigne’s Inland Sea (1986) as points of departure and incorporates a degree of kinetics previously unseen in his oeuvre. Twenty individual sheets of gently curved, twisted iron are anchored underwater. Buoyed by insulated foam, their floating edges skirt against one another, bobbing gently in the rippling water.

Thomson finds the variety of weathered and corrosive qualities of used iron aesthetically appealing; the concepts of collage and integration are important to the artist. Each of the individually shaped ‘water lilies’ has a unique corrosive quality and colour evident on its warped and overlaid surfaces. For Thomson, the imposition of imagery upon surface upon landscape is a recurrent theme.

Serena Bentley

*Artist’s statement Brick Bay 2006