Andrew Drummond is a pioneer New Zealand performance and installation artist, sculptor, and photographer.
Read MoreMuch preoccupied with ritual and symbol, the processes of history, and the significance of landscape, technology, and the human body, Drummond has moved away from 'live art' and successfully been commissioned for many publicly and privately sited, symbolically engrossing sculptures.
Drummond was trained at Palmerston North Teachers' College, after which he went to the University of Waterloo to acquire a Canadian Fine Arts degree. He returned to Aotearoa New Zealand, and over the late 1970s and early 80s he became an important innovator with his performances.
One of the reasons was meeting Joseph Beuys during a seminar in Edinburgh in 1975, and seeing his work. Drummond's early performances like Ritual for Summer Solstice (1976) and Onto Skin – Triptych Piece from 'Ngaraunga Set' (1977–1978) soon featured carefully chosen sites, meticulously enacted ritual, very personal symbolic objects, and the desire for social change.
In the mid-1980s gallery installations with specially constructed vitrines, low floor-hugging cases, or freestanding sculpture took over from in-person witnessing of Drummond's performative acts, or photographic documentation of those acts. Through elements such as graphite drawings and carved slate, Drummond created parallels between the large natural world and his own vulnerable body, linking braided rivers to his own capillaries and lungs, and using willow or copper 'archaeological' tools to cleanse, filter, or excavate sites as diverse as the Aramoana mudflats and the Whanganui and Maerewhenua Rivers.
Works from this period include Filter Action (1980), Five Sights (1987), Vessels and Containers (1987); Braided Rivers (1987); and Repository for Dreams and Journeys (1989).
In the 1990s, Drummond made public sculptures for parks with vistas, and both domestic and institutional indoor spaces. Initially many were static, spiralling copper forms positioned above symbolic vegetation like dried sphagnum moss, each a funnel above a filter. But when they became machinic substitutes for his own body, Drummond incorporated kinetic components connected to bellows or extending willow 'arms', lodged within moving shiny brass, glass, or perforated steel cylinders.
These works include Devices for Support and Storage (1990), Listening and Viewing Device (1994), Solitary Hanging Device (1994), 90º Device, Beating (1995), and For Breathing and Reaching (1995).
Advanced mechanical and digital technology—layered systems with multiple references to physics, geology, and anatomy—continued to become salient features in the new millennium in various indoor and outdoor commissioned projects. Located outside, Rolling Sphere (2011) is driven by jets of water emitted from inside onto skins of water, and Armillary for Air (2014) by outside wind gusts rushing inwards towards its exposed centre: spherical 'mini-earths' engineered to rotate in balance, in perfect harmony.
Other examples of Drummond's later works include Counter Rotating and Earthing Device (2000), Room for Observation (2002–2007), and Viewing Device, Counter Rotating (2009–2010).
Andrew Drummond was a recipient of the Tylee Cottage Residency, Whanganui in 1987, and a Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, Dunedin in 1980.He was Senior Lecturer in Sculpture at Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Christchurch between 1992 and 2003.
Andrew Drummond's work is held in major institutions across New Zealand, including Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū; and Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Significant solo exhibitions include About Balance & Occupation, Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch (2018); Andrew Drummond: Observation / Action / Reflection, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2010); The Light and Dark of Visibility, Vavasour Godkin, Auckland (2005); Rotating, Assigning, Displacing, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2002); Five Sights; Vessels and Containers, Braided Rivers, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (1987); and Andrew Drummond: Works 80, City Gallery Wellington (1981).
Selected group shows include Undreamed of... 50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, Hocken Library and Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2016); Artbarns: After Kurt Schwitters, Projects Environment, Lancashire, England (1999); Action: Replay, Artspace, Auckland (1998); ANZART in Edinburgh, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh (1984); Platforms, Canterbury Society of Arts, Christchurch (1978); and 7th Mildura Sculpture Triennial, Mildura, Australia (1978).
Andrew Drummond's website can be found here.
Drummond has work in the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery, Te Papa - Museum of New zealand, Wellington; and the Christchurch Art Gallery.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2021
