Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

[2] In 1967 a 24 year old Australian teacher John Maynard arrived in New Plymouth having been appointed director to develop a contemporary art gallery.

Maynard had no interest in setting up a conventional local body gallery and after touring the country saw that, “artists are where the action is.’[3] Maynard oversaw the Regent cinema building conversion by New Plymouth architect, Terry Boon[4] and developed the collection policy that focused on new forms of art and sculpture fostering the development of artists from New Zealand and the Pacific Rim and allowed for the deaccessioning of unwanted items.

Art critic Hamish Keith described the installation as, 'setting New Zealand art off to the kind of start it should have in the Seventies…Real Time has as its basic mechanism real life, and that itself is a major breakthrough.’[7] The gallery opened an extension designed by New Plymouth firm Boon Cox Goldsmith Jackson in 1998.

[9] Born in Christchurch in 1901 and largely self-educated, Len Lye was driven by a lifelong passion for motion, energy and the possibility of composing them as a form of art.

Now Showing also included ‘Forty Five Moments’, a selection of illustrated highlights from the previous 45 years of gallery activities with accompanying texts by Paul Brobbel, Tyler Cann, Susette Goldsmith, Simon Rees and Mercedes Vicente.