CULTURAL exchanges are, for some artists, the blood that pumps through their creative heart. They provide stimulation, inspiration and, at a practical level, a wider audience for their art.
The many exchanges available can take artists to a hut in the New Zealand bush, a century-old apartment in Berlin, or a modernist box in Tokyo. Or, as in the case of French sculptor Vincent Gontier, it can take them to “paradise”.
At least, that is what Gontier says he sees when he gazes out the front of the Wainui beachfront house that is has been home for the first week of his cultural exchange to New Zealand.
“He literally gasped when he first saw it,” says his host, fellow sculptor Johnny Turner. “Vincent is serious about his work but at the same time we are determined to show him the best we can of the local wines and foods.”
Grenoble-based Gontier is here on the Ronde d’un Art du Monde exchange, by which a French artist is hosted by one in another country and the host artist — Turner — is in turn welcomed in France.
The exchange is in five parts with this year’s, the fifth, having an Oceanic bent.
And it has a physical consequence . . . as part of the exchange the two artists collaborate on sculptural works that remain in their respective countries.
Though Turner is based in Wellington, he decided to bring Gontier to Gisborne, home of his principal dealer PaulNache.
Their collaborative work for New Zealand, however, will be made in Hamilton, Gontier melding his skill in steelwork with Turner’s knack with stone.
Since they don’t leave for Hamilton for a few days, Gontier has spent the week creating an installation that shows one of the two ways he likes to manipulate his preferred medium — newspaper.
The method he is perhaps best known for combines paper and steel, the steel forming a framework that compresses hundreds of newspapers into solid, yet fan-like, forms, creating pieces that have a kind of brutal beauty.
But it is the other method he is applying to the Gisborne work, laying out a newspaper “landscape” and constructing upon it miniature cities formed from cubist, yet ethereal, structures he has made by folding the newspaper, origami style.
Though the methods may be different, Gontier says both are ways of working through a similar source of inspiration, that being that newspapers, like people, are receptacles of memory.
Visually, Gontier harnesses the text and images on the paper to help create graphic impact.
And in terms of content, he enjoys the chance to respond to a particular context. On his current trip, for example, elements like the madness of the Rugby World Cup and the power of Maori culture are wending their way into his new work; and he has woven pages from French newspaper Le Monde with those from The Gisborne Herald to represent the meeting of his own culture with that he has come to experience.
Meanwhile, Gontier is also making an impact on Turner’s creative process. For the work they will create in Hamilton, the pair will likely make a piece much like Gontier’s steel and newspaper works — the French artist constructing the steel work while Turner mimics the paper element with stone.
“I am fascinated by the element of compression in Vincent’s work and it makes sense to incorporate stone which, after all, was formed by the act of geological compression,” Turner says.
It is likely he will work in basalt stone — itself formed by the violent act of being compressed in a volcanic explosion. But when he next month goes to France his hosts will have waiting a whopping piece of marble for the piece he and Gontier will gift to the town of La Tour du Pin.
The administrators of the exchange hope that, during the process, Gontier will share his culture with the people of Aotearoa while Turner ‘s visit “enables the residents of La Tour du Pin and surrounding areas to discover more about New Zealand”.
■ Vincent Gontier’s installation can be viewed at PaulNache gallery tomorrow only (from 5pm).
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