Christine Hellyar

Christine Hellyar (born 1947) is a New Zealand artist who makes sculptures and installations.

Education

Hellyar was born in 1947 in New Plymouth. She completed a Diploma in Fine Arts (Hons) at the Elam School of Art in 1970,

Over the years consistent themes in Hellyar's work have included 'her celebration of the environment, her interest in people's interaction with nature, the validation of the domestic and a questioning of traditional gender roles'. There is an element of chance in the work, as there are no instructions as to what order the items should be hung in.

An early exhibition titled Bush Situation (1976) created an environment to surround the viewer with floor pieces and hanging latex casts of vegetation, often stitched together with copper wire. Art historian Priscilla Pitts notes that 'Despite the subtlety of colour and detail in these works, some viewers found the flabby texture and rubbery smell of the latex unpleasant and distinctly unnatural, a less than welcome reminder that this was art, not nature'. This experience fuelled her interest in the way objects are collected and displayed as 'artefacts'. Each group of items was placed on a separate shelf in its cabinet, with each shelf referencing a different style of art: Realism at the top, then Abstraction, then Found Objects, with the lowest shelf melding all three. The exhibition took inspiration from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library and Hellyar's contribution Red cloud is made up of dozens of handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, serviettes and napkins dyed blood red. These materials were all used as items of exchange in early interactions between indigenous people in the Pacific and European explorers; the work was inspired by a work by colonial artist William Ellis in which Tahitian people wear European neckerchiefs. The installation, made of printed cloth and sculptures, extended Hellyar's interest in the history of the Enlightenment in New Zealand:

The history of the Enlightenment in New Zealand has been a subject of Hellyar’s work since 2002, notably with her exhibition Mrs Cook’s Kete at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford with Maureen Lander. Exploring histories of gender, Hellyar notes that Mrs Cook’s mother was an entrepreneur with a warehouse that provided much of the women’s clothing used for trade in the Pacific. Hellyar is particularly interested in what Europeans brought into the Pacific at that time, and also what they took, including the development of museum collections that map objects into hierarchies through museum processes of naming, sorting and display. Botanical drawing, still in use in museums today, was popular in the 18th century, both for scientific use and amongst enthusiasts, amateur botanists and gardeners.

Hellyar's work is held in many New Zealand public collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Artistry

Art historian Michael Dunn feels that Hellyar's art is influenced by pop art and Don Driver, and notes that Hellyar's conservationist values present in her works. When discussing Hellyar's works, especially works that incorporate collected objects, Dunn remarks that "Hellyar comes across as an inveterate collector with an eye for ordering her found objects into systems of presentation reminiscent of old museum displays."