There’s a symmetry about Wellington artist Gabby O’Connor creating her latest work below sea level in the basement of Capital E.
Entitled What Lies Beneath, O’Conner is constructing an iceberg, or more correctly the bottom of an iceberg, that part submerged beneath the ocean, out of thousands of sheets of tissue paper. The work will be exhibited in the Hirschfield Gallery at City Gallery from July 2.
O’Connor’s iceberg is the latest in a series of her works looking at change caused by extreme pressure. She was inspired after reading a book about the British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott who perished along with four of his comrades at the South Pole in 1912.
“I was interested in the pressures forcing movement of the ice shelf and how the bodies of Scott and his men were now 50 metres below the ice and will eventually be forced off the Ross Ice Shelf into an iceberg,” O’Connor says.
It’s a big project, 12.4 metres by 4.2 metres, and two metres deep. O’Connor has used 3,000 sheets of tissue paper, each stapled together, 20 litres of methylated spirits and six kilos of shellac, a resin secreted by the female lac bug and used in the French polishing of furniture. Each piece of tissue has been dyed various shades of blue using a solution of dye and methylated spirits and coated in shellac to give the paper strength.
“It required a lot of planning and the making of lots of models,” O’Connor says. “I had to convince the gallery that a giant sculpture made out of tissue paper was possible and that it would have structural integrity. The paper is robust and the load is spread over a wide area so there isn’t really that much stress.”
By using fluorescent lighting and the natural light in the Hirschfield Gallery O’Connor hopes blue light from her sculpture will filter through and fill the whole gallery space.
“I want to make a completely blue environment, make it feel quite watery, with the idea of being under water without the need for a wetsuit and without getting wet. The work will breathe in the space and as people walk around it it will move in the breeze.”
O’Connor is from Melbourne where she studied sculpture at the Victorian College of Arts before doing her Masters at the College of Arts in Sydney. She has been sculpting in paper since the early 90’s. It’s a medium she stumbled across after she became allergic to the toxins contained in the more traditional sculptural materials of metals and plastics.
“The Victorian College of Arts was very traditional and when I said I wanted to make things out of paper they all freaked out.”
But it has worked for O’Connor. She has exhibited in Japan, Holland and Canada as well as Australia, and has a new project planned in Melbourne next year. Since moving to Wellington 10 years ago O’Connor has taught art and design at Massey University and her sculptures have been shown around the country.
Building her iceberg at Capital E has been pretty much full time since February. The work has been mostly self-funded with City Gallery contributing to the costs of materials.
“My main expense has been time,” she says. “I’m lucky to have a very supportive partner.”
At the same time as her giant iceberg is displayed at City Gallery a companion work is being exhibited at the Northwall Art Centre in Oxford England. Five iceberg “kits”, along with assembling instructions have been sent to Oxford.
And nothing will be wasted when her City Gallery exhibition ends on July 31. O’Connor’s iceberg can be dismantled and stored flat to be reconfigured as need be.
“I hope to do another couple of works with it before recycling it into something else,” O’Connor says.
What Lies Beneath, City Gallery, July 2 - 31.