Phil Price

Pepper, 2022
Carbon fibre, precision bearings, stainless steel, concrete plinth
4,400 x 500 x 1200 mm
Price on request

With a slender, elongated form, Phil Price’s Pepper is a delight to watch. The subtle curves and elegant proportions of this sculpture create a unified impression of polished finesse. As with many of Price’s sculptures, the subject matter is merely hinted at, leaving the viewer to assemble impressions of their own. The long arms of Pepper are impressively intuitive in their movements, sometimes hovering in one place for minutes at time, before drifting, pendulum-like, back and forth, or catching the breeze and drifting into full rotation. Price is renowned for his enchanting kinetic sculptures which have the ability to draw themselves towards the breeze and also be pushed away. Action and dynamism are inherent. The effect is of a slow-moving dance as observed in Pepper; delicate, spontaneous and mildly hypnotic.

As New Zealand’s pre-eminent kinetic sculptor, Price often refers to his workplace as a design studio in a sense, where he conceptualises the work through sketching and grapples with kinetic forms using digital drawings. He uses media technologies to aid with the mechanical and technical negotiations of space for what are powerful portraits of motion and evolution. Price’s ease in achieving form and kinetic functionality through carbon fibre composite methods of construction is unparalleled, moving from the static to the mesmerising movement we see in Pepper. The work transforms from the artist’s intimate sketches, through his computer animated technical process, to a fully realised sculpture.

Of his artistic practice, he notes: “There is a reasonable amount of design effort, craft and engineering involved, and I think that gives it something of a unique presence. All of my works are a combination of metals, they all have this kind of paint finish, so they have a look to them which is compound, organic, curvaceous. I’m very fond of getting all of those right…of getting to the pinnacle of making the perfect organic machine.”

Other Works