Art references the every day

ARTIST ON DECK: Artist Glen Hayward discusses his work with Objectspace director Kim Paton at PaulNache’s stand at the recent Auckland Art Fair. The work pictured, He Used To Have A Consulting Business In Indonesia (2016, kauri, paint and found object), was sold to the Wallace Arts Trust. Picture by Thomas P Teutenberg

A MAN walks into an art gallery and, apart from a fire extinguisher, a light switch, a couple of plastic chairs and a deflated ball, sees nothing in the room.

“Where’s the art?” he says to his companion.

“There”, his friend points to the assorted objects.

Gisborne gallery owner Matt Nache says that, to this day, he’s never forgotten the impact of Northland artist Glen Hayward’s hyper-real, painted wooden pieces sculpted to look like items from everyday life.

“I’d heard about Glen but I’d never seen anything like his work. I was in awe and thought ‘this is really someone I’d like to work with’,” Nache says.

“I spent the next five years following his work, then when we finally met, we really hit it off.”

So a dozen years after that first sighting, he included the artist in the trio of practitioners (completed by Evan Woodruffe and Scott Gardiner) he showed at the recent Auckland Art Fair.

And now he’s curated a special installation of Hayward’s works for a new show that this week opens at his PaulNache gallery.

Like Matt Nache himself, viewers would be advised to look carefully as they enter the space, deciding what is real and what has been meticulously sculpted and painted by Hayward to look like everyday objects.

“For me it’s exciting because, although the conceptual narrative of a lot of art can be interesting and wonderful, I still very much value an artist’s studio practice . . . their talent in the making of things,” Nache says.

The artist himself won’t be here for this week’s opening — having been whisked off to Australia after his work was spotted at the Auckland fair, he’s a victim of his own success.

But Nache will certainly be on board to gauge people’s response to the installation.

“I love the idea of people coming in and discovering it for themselves, deciding what is real and what is not. It's going to be quite bizarre but, of course, really really interesting, which is my idea of a great show.”