| Phill Rooke | Artist
and Sculptor
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Phill is a sculptor. Most of Phill's work is completed painted high relief. None of the works are "paintings": they are all painted reliefs (technically termed "polychrome reliefs".) Some of these works are available for sale. Phill also completes commissions in conjunction with communities. For more information, please email Phill.
There are six pages of illustrations and descriptions of works on this site. See Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 8
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The sculpture "Running across GI" is installed in the foyer of the Glen Innes Police Station.
A number of people have contributed to the work. The piece of Taniko on the right hand side of the frame was made by Dianne Wade from Tai Rawhiti. On the left is a piece of traditional weaving from Manihiki and Rakahanga in the Cook Islands. It is made from rito, fibre from coconut fronds. The weaver was Tina Ioaner. On the bottom of the frame is a section based on Celtic designs and the drawings of Johnston Tauevihi from Glen Innes.
Cushla
Parekowhai talks with Phill about the Exhibition.
Click here.
"Working
lives – A sculpture Project on the Manukau Foreshore"
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Click
for detail.
Following on from Phill's 51 Series, he has retained his interest in storying around our recent history. This work "Rita – a tribute to Rita Angus" is centred on part of the painting, Portrait of Mrs Betty Curnow by Rita Angus 1942. On loan to the Auckland City Art Gallery. The work is a Polychrome wood relief 113 x 50 x 10 cm in the collection of Judith Tizard MP. Most
of Phill's work is completed painted high relief. |
Click
for detail.
| Please
click on any photo
Please
click on any photo |
Painted
reliefs –
'51 Series Completed in 2002 – 2003 These pictures are part of a series of polychrome reliefs Phill completed in 2002. Each is approximately 80 x 60 x 4 cm. To give some context to these reliefs let me refer to two essays by John Berger: 'Appearances' and 'Stories'. In 'Appearances' he writes about the half language of appearance. "Our response to appearances is a very deep one which is instinctive and atavistic. For example, appearances alone – regardless of all conscious considerations – can sexually arouse. For example, the stimulus to action – however tentative it remains – can be provoked by the colour red. More widely, the look of the world is the widest possible confirmation of the thereness of the world, and thus the look of the world continually proposes and confirms our relation to that thereness, which nourishes our sense of Being." The appearances of these reliefs should arouse and provoke in the above manner. I also see these sculptures as story telling works. Like Berger I don't see story as reportage. The story's essential tension is in the mystery of the spaces between the images as it moves towards its destination. Berger writes, "No story is like a wheeled vehicle whose contact with the road is continuous. Stories walk, like animals or people." He goes on to say that stories are not only discontinuous but also based on a tacit agreement about what is not said, and about what connects the discontinuities. In the story of an artwork, the artist and viewer are only part of this agreement. The central role is played by those who the story is about. It is between their actions and attributes and the reactions of the artist and viewer that the unstated connections are made. In this way the artist, viewer and subject are fused into an amalgam which Berger calls the story's reflecting subject. The story narrates on behalf of this subject, appeals to it and speaks in its voice. The
events of 1951 make up a complex story, and our perception of it provides a further,
even more complex narration, full of spaces and discontinuities. For example,
I recently met a woman who had just discovered a suitcase of her dead father's.
It contained his union card and his loyalty card. It also contained a number of
unpublished manuscripts: plays and poems he had written. He had taken part in
the watersiders' 151 day long lockout of 1951. It was a defining year for this
man and his children. After that event, she reported, he had lost revolutionary
hope and become resigned to the consumer society of the fifties. Historical interpretations
of the events of 1951 vary. Was it stimulated by the cold war, was it a last imperial
tug from 'Mother England', was it a local battle between three leaders: Prime
Minister Holland, FOL leader Walsh and Watersider's leader Jock
Barnes? |
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Page last updated on 31st May 2007.
MORE SCULPTURES by PHILL ROOKE
EARLY GREY LYNN | SKIPPING UNDERNEATH l CHE GUEVARA l JOHN BERGER
