Glen Hayward says the Covid-19 lockdown made him more conscious of how important it was to connect with people on a physical level. Photo / Bevan Conley
Glen Hayward says the Covid-19 lockdown made him more conscious of how important it was to connect with people on a physical level. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui sculptor Glen Hayward's work "At night at the museum" has claimed third place at the 2020 Wallace Trust Art Awards.
The trust was launched in 1992 by founder Sir James Wallace, and its awards are now the longest-surviving and largest annual art awards of their kind in New Zealand.
The original prize of a residency at the Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont, USA, was scrapped due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and while Hayward said that would have been an amazing experience, receiving a cash prize of $20,000 instead was "never unwelcome".
"I'm in the middle of freighting some work to Australia so it was really timely, because sending work overseas is frighteningly expensive," Hayward said.
"I took it over yesterday and I said to the guy doing up the quote, 'do I need to be on my hands and knees praying?'.
"Luckily it wasn't too bad. It was eye-watering, but not too eye-watering."
"At night at the museum" is a wooden reconstruction of the drinking fountain at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
"I was over there a few years ago looking around at all the amazing art and at this extraordinary piece of architecture, and I really loved the consideration they'd given to this thing called a public good.
"Very few people seemed to use [the drinking fountain] because we all seem to carry plastic water bottles around, but when that building was built, the public good of freely available water would have just been part of the infrastructure of the building.
Hayward's winning work is a reconstruction of the drinking fountain at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, complete with stubbed out cigarettes. Photo / Supplied
"It's easy to lose sight of those social infrastructure things that era gave us, and I know that when I go to the Davis Library I like to use the drinking fountain, it's kind of like exercising your civil rights in a way."
Hayward's fountain is completed by a smattering of stubbed out cigarettes, also carved from wood, which he said was inspired by thinking about the security guards who kept watch of the Guggenheim's works for "hour after hour".
"The security guard is mooching about with this stuff all the time, like the most wealthy collector there possibly could be, they spend eight hours a day with it.
"I think about them as different kinds of viewers I suppose, who have to kill time and hang out with it.
"It can be a tremendously boring job, because they're just watching people watch art, and at night-time there isn't even people to watch."
The Covid-19 pandemic had made him much more conscious of how important it was to connect with people on a physical level, Hayward said.
"I was surprised when I heard other artists after lockdown say things like 'it was just great being by myself and not talking to people', and it seemed as if they'd talked themselves into thinking it was a good thing.
