Glen Hayward’s work blends carving, painting and conceptualism to snare the viewer in a standoff around what is real or illusionary, art or not art, profound or absurd. 

Hayward’s latest work presented at Sydney Contemporary – simultaneously exhibited at City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand – is based on his travel to some of the world’s major galleries. Rather than profound art experiences, Hayward walked away with bad photographs of fixings such as the gold drinking fountain and Pollock’s paint pots from the Guggenheim Museum and the exit doors at The Museum of Modern Art. He later remakes these objects out of wood in his Whanganui studio. The project put a new twist on Hayward’s interest in redeploying the objects that are encountered in and/or put to work in the art gallery, which allows him to tease out the behaviours and experiences they engender, and then question how this all intersects with ‘the real world’. These sculptures are neither (or both) here or there, functional or dysfunctional. The project has become even more pointed at a time of limited travel and access to international art.

Hayward is a wayward art viewer and, in many ways, also a wayward maker of art. His work constantly forces us to look and think again. It offers a kind of everyday mysticism, challenging us to trust in or doubt the validity of the objects or experiences that we encounter in the here and now—especially inside the art gallery but also in the world beyond it.

Biography

Glen Hayward was born in 1974 in Auckland New Zealand and is known for his sculptures of everyday, mass-produced items. Carved from wood and painted exactly as they were as found objects, they masquerade as the real. Hayward completed his doctoral dissertation at Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts in 2005.

"I work at the intersection of carving and painting,  I find all the world of things endlessly fascinating and potentially meaningful. This way of making solves two tensions, one my tendency to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things, the time it takes to carve things limits the number of things I can make. The second is more process based, it acknowledges that selection of the 'thing' reflects a way of understanding the world, as the ready-made enacts. 

Although the world is fecund the mere presentation of it shows - an angle not all angles. To make a ready-made incites a value for the thing depicted, it permits a physical understanding of the world through making and parallels this through viewing."

Sculpture

Selected Exhibitions

Recent solo shows include: Wish You Were Here, City Gallery, Wellington (2022); One day, today, PAULNACHE (2019); As if, PAULNACHE (2018); Dendrochronology, Tauranga Art Gallery, The Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, OBJECTSPACE, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2018); Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks (2017); SPRING1883, The Windsor Hotel (2016); I don't want you to worry about me I have met some Beautiful People, City Gallery Wellington and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu (2013); Mirrorworld, McCahon house open studio, Auckland Arts Festival (2011).

Group shows include: Contour 556 Public art and architecture Biennale, Canberra (2018); A Working Model of the World, Sheila C Johnson Design Centre, Parsons, The New School, New York, (2017); The Obstinate object, curators Aaron Lister and Abbey Cunnae, City Gallery, Wellington (2012); Debuilding, curator Justin Paton, Christchurch City Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch (2011); Call Waiting, curator Alexa Johnston, Auckland City Art Gallery (NEW), Auckland (2010); Reboot, The Jim and Mary Barr Collection, curator Justin Paton, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery and Wellington City Gallery (2006-2007).

Selected Publications

Collections

Glen’s work is held in private collections in Switzerland, Hong Kong, New York, Singapore, Australia and throughout New Zealand including public collections such as the Christchurch City Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch; Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland; Chartwell Collection; The Jim and Mary Barr Collection; The Parkin Collection, Wellington; Sir James Wallace Arts Trust, Auckland; Cato Collection, Sydney NSW

PAULNACHE has represented Glen Hayward since 2014.

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