Fluorescent refreshment

Bill Culbert's 1985 artwork Long White Cloud, which hangs in the open space shared by the Art History and Adam Art Gallery staff on level three of the Old Kirk Building, has had a makeover.

Long White Cloud
Bill Culbert, Long White Cloud, 1985. Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection.

Adam Art Gallery staff took the opportunity provided by the recent visit of the internationally acclaimed, New Zealand-born, United Kingdom- and France-based artist, who was in town for his exhibition at Hopkinson Mossman Wellington. Under his direction, the University has now future-proofed this signature work in the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection.

Born in 1935, Culbert is well known for his assemblages using lights together with found objects including plastic bottles, suitcases and furniture. He was New Zealand’s representative at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. Long White Cloud was first created in 1985. It entered the University’s Art Collection in 1996 on the recommendation of founding Associate Professor of Art History, Jenny Harper, who had a longstanding association with Culbert.

Long White Cloud consists of a fluorescent tube threaded with 13 plastic bottles. This is one of the artist’s first forays into combining plastic bottles and light. It is one of a number of responses to the more remote regions of the South Island Culbert visited while on a fellowship in 1978. The line-up of white plastic bottles with their coloured caps is suggestive of a row of alpine peaks, perhaps snagging the clouds of New Zealand’s Māori name the title suggests.

Over time, the work’s components have aged; tubes have died and the plastic has become brittle and discoloured. Several bottles were replaced in 2003, so few parts from the 1985 ‘original’ remain. Now the work has been fully refurbished, with Culbert providing the gallery with 13 new bottles which have been threaded onto a new slimmer tube. Precise instructions on this process have been prepared so future versions of the work will remain true to the artist’s original concept.

Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi manages the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection and runs a programme of exhibitions that are open to the public. For more information visit the Gallery's website.