Virginia King
Southern Nautilus
2007
stainless steel
Virginia King’s latest work in her Nautilus series is an exhibition comprising text-based, stainless steel sculptures which are titled Southern Nautilus. The works combine form, text, sound and lighting to create an impressive installation of strength and beauty. They are inspired by the exquisite and rare Pupu-Tarakihi; the translucent shell cradle that carries and protects the eggs of the female Paper Nautilus. By increasing the scale of natural life forms, Virginia King’s work draws attention to their delicacy, complexity and vulnerability.
In Southern Nautilus Virginia King has used new and traditional technology to create a series of spiralling shell sculptures with integrated text that engages the viewer. The initial layer of her spiralling text is sea-sounds. She has assembled lists of words about the ocean and makes reference to coastal places that have influenced her life and to the childhood memory of listening to the sea, holding a shell to one’s ear. There are other references - to navigation, to endangered fish species and to the plunder of the ocean by over-fishing and bottom-trawling. Her sculpture is informed by sense of place, life in the South Pacific and by mythology, history and literature.
Sound, lighting and integrated text are all pivotal to King’s sculptural practice. The Southern Nautilus works (from an edition of 8) are illuminated by intense blue lighting and are complemented by an acoustic component of layered whisperings of the text. Each artwork in the series is unique, with subtle changes to the text although the final word inside each spiralling sculpture remains the same - Lament.
At Brick Bay the works complement Virginia King’s elegant sculpture Sliver which is placed so that its intricate form is reflected in the nearby lake.
Dr. Robin Woodward
