About the Artist
Bing Dawe (born North Otago, 1952) is acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s most prominent sculptors, his work strongly driven by a deep concern for the environment and human impact on it, especially the damage caused unthinkingly to creatures often overlooked, like eels, small fish or birds overlooked or wrongly believed to be common or safe from threat. He graduated from the University of Canterbury, School of Fine Arts (Ilam) in the mid 1970s, and has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and overseas, including a major survey exhibition at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch. He has won numerous awards including the prestigious Wallace Visa Gold Award in 1999.
For more details and other works, please contact Barbara Speedy, Gallery Director info@thediversion.co.nz or call on 0274 408 121.
Recent Works
Dawe is well known as a champion of eels, using his art to highlight the fact that these creatures are struggling for existence as waterways are dammed and diverted for agricultural irrigation and electricity generation, with no facility for the eels to return to their upriver growing and maturing grounds, no way to avoid the traps. Now, the peril facing the eels is more widely recognised, and Dawe must take some credit for raising that awareness in decades of work focused on the humble eel.
His Galaxiidae series features the tiny fish commonly known as whitebait. They got the name Galaxiidae because their speckled markings resemble the Galaxies. Dawe references this in the use of constellations within the hemispheres and circles of his sculptures.
He highlights kokopu including those harvested young as whitebait, vulnerable particularly to degrading water quality in our rivers and dramatically reduced flows caused by irrigation and electricity generation. Wickedly curved steel wires imply a threat, whether direct (hunting, traps) or indirectly (the wires of electricity generation for instance). He lays down a challenge regarding their presence and impending absence in the positive sculpture vs negative space in these beautiful elegant works.
Beautifully painted studies in acrylic & oil on paper add another layer of insight to Dawe’s exquisite sculptures, finely crafted commentaries on New Zealand’s rare, vulnerable and sometimes overlooked wildlife.
More About the Artist
Bing Dawe’s work is represented in many public and private collections, both in New Zealand and overseas, and he has completed public commissions for all the major cities in this country.
Dawe also influenced subsequent generations of sculptors while tutor and Programme Co-ordinator for the Diploma of Craft Design (now Bachelor of Design) at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. Throughout his career, he has explored political and environmental concerns both global and local, through finely worked sculptures and paintings which invite an intense connection on an aesthetic level.
