Terry Stringer
Benediction, 2014,
Bronze, stone,
2100 x 500 x 500mm
Terry Stringer’s work teases the eye. Benediction plays with us and rewards us when we let go of our trained eye and simply let the harmony of his sculpting overtake us. Stringer has, for decades, moulded abstract and divine concepts of blessing and guidance into figurative sculpture. Benediction’s still form appears to us in a continuous expression of movement, the blurring imperceptibly of what looks like a hand, a visage, a paddle. The plinth it balances on reaches almost two metres into the air, allowing us to experience the work from the ground and gaze upwards, and around.
With Benediction we get the sense that there is delight in Stringer’s illusion, his work a small part of what is an extensive oeuvre of visually commanding challenges. His entire practice lies in his skill in testing the divide between the ideal and the real. As he has mused: “Sculpture can have a series of horizons beyond which its world changes.” Stringer has a twist in the way he sees things due to a small flaw in his eyesight, which trickles in to his art through a distinct lack of depth. “I have to deduce depth logically, from visual clues.” Using multiple points of perceptive entry, each form presented by the single sculpture is experienced from a different place - none of these images are compromised by the other, discretely dissolved into the next. With the success of this comes the element of surprise.Terry Stringer’s work teases the eye. Benediction plays with us and rewards us when we let go of our trained eye and simply let the harmony of his sculpting overtake us. Stringer has, for decades, moulded abstract and divine concepts of blessing and guidance into figurative sculpture. Benediction’s still form appears to us in a continuous expression of movement, the blurring imperceptibly of what looks like a hand, a visage, a paddle. The plinth it balances on reaches almost two metres into the air, allowing us to experience the work from the ground and gaze upwards, and around.
With Benediction we get the sense that there is delight in Stringer’s illusion, his work a small part of what is an extensive oeuvre of visually commanding challenges. His entire practice lies in his skill in testing the divide between the ideal and the real. As he has mused: “Sculpture can have a series of horizons beyond which its world changes.” Stringer has a twist in the way he sees things due to a small flaw in his eyesight, which trickles in to his art through a distinct lack of depth. “I have to deduce depth logically, from visual clues.” Using multiple points of perceptive entry, each form presented by the single sculpture is experienced from a different place - none of these images are compromised by the other, discretely dissolved into the next. With the success of this comes the element of surprise.
More from this artist
Artist Bio
Terry Stringer ONZM was born in England in 1946 and came to New Zealand in 1952. He achieved a Diploma of Fine Art at Auckland University in 1967. Throughout his career, Stringer has received numerous accolades, including the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship three times. In the 2003 New Year Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to sculpture.
Stringer is best known as a sculptor, having made two notable public installations: the explosive Mountain Fountain for Auckland’s Aotea Square (located to the Auckland Cathedral in Parnell) and the similarly powerful white lightning bolt in Rotorua. Most of Stringer’s work, however, is done on a smaller domestic scale, with everyday figures and objects comprising his subject matter.
Stringer’s sculptures fill space in a way that manipulates rather than occupies it, some works using methods first explored by the Cubists in the early 1900’s. Not conforming to traditional illusionistic perspective, Stringer tilts the horizontal space towards the viewer, his bronzes seeming to deny their three-dimensionality as they appear slightly squashed and crumpled at the corners. In other works he enhances the depth instead of suppressing the volume – a skilful use of perspective and shading makes a wall-mounted relief appear to have depth where actually there is very little.
These works are part of the trompe l’oeil tradition, works playing on the ‘trick of the eye’. In his works Stringer does not attempt to make any political or environmental statements, rather the sophisticated objects he creates are to be enjoyed and contemplated upon, providing pleasure, nostalgia and a touch of humour.
