Ngā mihi to all those who joined exhibiting artist, Natalie Guy for an artist talk, If things could speak: Translating in the Language of Sculpture.

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Natalie Guy | b.1964 | Ngāpuhi, Ngāruahine MFA, DocFA The University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau DipFA, Otago Polytechnic

Natalie Guy is a sculptor, working across the mediums of bronze, steel, wood, glass, and plastics. She has a particular interest in the legacy of mid-century modernism and how our memories of the stylistic cues inherent in architecture, art, and objects from that era can be engaged and defamiliarised through translation into new sculptural objects. As a female artist based in Aotearoa, addressing international modernism through a glocalised lens, she questions and confronts the iconic nature of modernism by presenting work which questions the legacy while acknowledging her relationship to her urban surrounds. Following in the feminist literary footsteps of the the écriture feminine movement of the 1970’s which aimed to re-capture text as female self-expression, she rewrites modernist source anew.

Influences include the modernist architect Jane Drew, theorist Isabelle Graw’s thoughts on mutual influence, artist Hito Steryl’s essay The Language of Things and Nicholas Bourriaud’s argument for the altermodern era in The Radicant. Guy (Ngāpuhi, Ngāruahine) lives and works in Auckland, Aotearoa. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout Aotearoa in public and private galleries and exhibitions.