Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) Cover: ‘Trilogy (A Flip Opposite: and Two Twisters)’, 1977/2016 A Flip and Two performing at Twisters, Berkeley Govett-Brewster Art Museum, 1965 Trilogy (A Flip Art Gallery/Len Len Lye Foundation and Two Twisters) Lye Centre, 2016 Collection, 1977 Collection Govett-Brewster Len Lye Foundation Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/ Collection, Art Gallery Len Lye Centre Govett-Brewster Photo: Leith Photographer Art Gallery/ Robertson unknown Len Lye Centre

P / 2 John Matthews Len Lye in studio in studio with with ‘Flip’, ‘Twister’, New New York, c. 1974 York, c. 1974 Len Lye Foundation Len Lye Foundation Collection, Collection, Govett-Brewster Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/ Art Gallery/ Len Lye Centre Len Lye Centre Photographer Photographer unknown unknown

P / 4 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 5 Len Lye in studio with ‘Flip’, New York, 1970s Len Lye Foundation Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/ Len Lye Centre Photographer unknown

P / 6 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 7 Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters)

Paul Brobbel Len Lye Curator, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre

Intense, frightening and beautiful, the expertly engineered Trilogy is one of Len Lye’s most captivating works. Suspended from the ceiling, a large loop (Flip) and two long strips of stainless steel (Twisters) are spun and contorted into a motorised dance. Tension builds in the flexing steel, followed by sudden whiplash stops. The thunderous crash of Trilogy reverberates around the gallery, a sound described by Lye as like ‘icicles tumbling down your back’. It is a masterpiece in the field of kinetic art and a testament to Lye’s vision of composing with motion. Trilogy holds a special place in the heart of the Govett-Brewster, built for the 1977 exhibition Kinetic Works – the first exhibition of Lye’s work in his homeland – and a historic part of the Govett-Brewster Collection ever since. This publication celebrates four decades of Trilogy at the Govett-Brewster with a revision of curator Tyler Cann’s 2003 essay Trilogy, Tantra and Terror, alongside a newly commissioned essay from Karen Wrigglesworth exploring the engineering challenges behind one of the world’s most compelling sculptures.

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 9 Trilogy, Tantra and Terror

Tyler Cann Curator of Contemporary Art, Columbus Museum of Art

To see Len Lye’s 1977 Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) at what he once called the ‘The swingiest art gallery of the Antipodes, the Govett-Brewster in New Plymouth, New Zealand’ is to make a sort of pilgrimage.1 The work is the culmination of Lye’s programmed steel sculpture and the only one realised during his lifetime on the massive scale he envisioned. The difficulty of installing and maintaining Trilogy means it does not often travel. Even at the Govett- Brewster, it only performs at timed intervals and due to the stress the work exerts upon itself, exhibitions of Trilogy tend to have short runs. All of this lends the experience a somewhat ritualistic character and one that is very much in keeping with the artist’s conception of the work. Len Lye did not design Trilogy to be a polite object of aesthetic contemplation. Rather, the work was meant to harness the sublime in the service of art, to short-circuit conscious thought with a jolt of awe and wonder. With the work at rest, we see two long strips of steel hanging still and silent from the gallery ceiling. They flank a third that is suspended at both ends to form a twisted loop. Perched above, with its symmetry and grandeur, the work already makes a powerful sculptural statement. Then Trilogy’s potential energy kicks into gear and the two hanging strips begin a loping whirl. Stand close enough and you can feel the rush of air as it’s cut by the steel blades. Just as they seem to gain their rhythm, the shimmering ribbons crash to a halt with a resounding clang that echoes through the gallery. Reflected spotlights dance around the room and then slow to a gentle shiver (an effect that is like stepping into one of Lye’s black and white scratch films). The bands jump to life again, faster, then crash, before the central loop begins a slow twist. The torqued

Len Lye in studio 1. Unpublished and ribbon flips itself inside out with another ringing blast. This dance instensifies, with ‘Flip’, New unsent letter to York, 1970s Philip Leider, as the twisters spin furiously to reach double, and then triple harmonic curves. April 1978, Len Len Lye Foundation Lye Foundation The work is open to a bit of chaos, not every performance is the same, but Collection, Archive, Box 14, Govett-Brewster Govett-Brewster typically, the central loop has the final act; its tumbling inversion resonates Art Gallery/ Art Gallery/ Len Lye Centre Len Lye Centre, through the museum as visitors stand transfixed, exhilarated, sometimes Photographer New Plymouth, unknown New Zealand. applauding, or laughing out loud.

P / 10 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 11 At less than half the size, with blades scarcely 2.4 metres long, the 1965 sculpture addresses. As with Lye’s 1965 Blade, one can feel the gallery shake version of Trilogy, called Flip and Two Twisters, seems to have evoked primal in the work’s more violent episodes. As the Twisters spin into double and triple fear during its presentation at the Berkeley Art Museum’s 1966 exhibition harmonic curves, we might feel the hair on the back of the neck stand up, or a Directions in Kinetic Sculpture. Philip Leider, Artforum editor and critic, no friend vertiginous tingling at the base of the spine. In the gallery, jaws drop and smiles of kinetic art generally, wrote in Artforum that the work ‘manages to compress crack; some catch their breath and hold it, others sigh. These effects come so ferocious an energy that the viewer stands paralysed, gripped by an emotion at the nexus between eye, mind, and body, at the point where the boundaries almost of terror’. He continues: between them blur. Vision here becomes more like taste, hearing or smell. Its stimuli physically enter the body, act upon it and react with it. Just as Flip turns The whiplash strain on the steel produces a series of frightening, in on itself, there ceases to be a distinct outside or inside to the spectator’s unearthly sounds in perfect accord with the mood of barbaric energy body. Trilogy reveals our porous relation to the external world. that seems to have been released. Installed by itself in a black-painted Lye never tired of reminding his listeners that the viewer needed to room, the viewer comes upon Lye’s ‘Trilogy’ as he would come upon a feel empathy with his work as you ‘unconsciously feel yourself into another’s volcano. The effect is beautiful, frightening, utterly beyond the petty shoes’. It seems that Lye himself could hardly do otherwise when confronted limitations of the other artists in the exhibition.2 with a pattern of motion. From age ten he practiced such compassion until he ‘could levitate with the curling smoke, scud with the wind-blown leaf, sashay Trilogy’s spinning helices hover on the edge of control, releasing an with the reflection of masts on water, shimmy with the flapping flag, glide with almost obscene amount of raw power even if they do form graceful harmonic the snake. ...There isn’t a motion that one cannot isolate and feel in relation to curves. Flip is not so free to whiplash, but along with its pent-up tension, one’s own solid body’.9 Lye sought to cultivate this kinaesthetic sensitivity in it unleashes ‘a kind of cascading avalanche of sound’ as Lye put it.3 The his viewers, explaining his penchant for scaling up his work by saying, ‘A three magnitude of Trilogy’s energetic pulse goes beyond our usual expectations for foot shrub falls over and it’s a lot of “so what”. But when it’s a 300 foot redwood works of art, summoning the awestruck sensation we typically associate with tree, then you stay and your mouth opens with a little bit of awe about energy, the vastness and power of nature. weight, gravity, and that’s the stuff we’re made of, and that’s something’.10 Given Trilogy’s furious drama of tension and release, it is no wonder Lye’s The heroic scale of Lye’s work may rely on a certain rhetoric of power but ‘The wife Ann called Trilogy ‘the sexiest work Len ever made’.4 The sexual analogy motto is, never make the size of the figure so great it shrivels the anatomical is common among the work’s reviewers. The critic Dore Ashton remarked that stance of the beholder down to the size of a peanut’.11 Viewers are not meant to 5 2. ‘Kinetic Sculpture Flip’s ‘erotic undulations’ were reminiscent of a belly dance. Echoing Lye’s own cower in front of Lye’s work, but to feel more alive. at Berkeley’, 6 Artforum, May 1966, loose iconography for the Twisters as ‘spermatozoa’ and the Flip as ‘womb’, art To get the scale Lye desired for Trilogy requires a great deal of technical pp. 40-42. historian and critic Barbara Rose related them to the ancient Hindu lingam and expertise, and Lye was no engineer. He couldn’t even drive a car. The existence 3. ‘Considering a Temple’ in Figures yoni figures. She saw its sexuality as sublimated, ‘a re-enactment of the sexual of the Govett-Brewster’s Trilogy is entirely due to his supporters in New of Motion, p. 89. 9. Ibid., p. 82. 4. Roger Horrocks, Len embrace in dialectical terms, an idealised sexuality as high spiritual union in the Plymouth, in particular John Matthews, whom Lye called ‘an engineering genius’ Lye: A Biography. 10. David Grieve 7 12 Auckland: Auckland Hindu sense…’. As the Flip finally shudders and inverts itself, adults in the room and Peter Kerner and ‘my one and only patron … half my age’. In fact, the work’s size, roughly University Press, in cooperation 2001. p. 308. will recognise its orgiastic convulsions. While Lye was comfortable with such with KQED-TV, six metres in length, is specific to the dimensions of the Govett-Brewster’s Directions in 5. Ibid., p. 308. anthropomorphism, he also felt it was superficial, saying, ‘I go along with both Kinetic Sculpture upper gallery. Spurred by Ray Thorburn’s suggestion to the Govett-Brewster’s 6. Unpublished [film], University note dated March these literal and symbolic types of association, for, after all, they may make the of California, second director, Bob Ballard, in 1974, Matthews went to Lye’s studio in Warwick, 6, 1977. Len Berkeley, 1966. 13 Lye Foundation viewer feel at home with their imagery long enough to dig deeper—and perhaps New York to propose a retrospective at the Govett-Brewster. After some 11. ‘Considering a Archives, Box 25. come to respond unconsciously to their underlying significance in relation to Temple’ in Figures weeks in Lye’s studio, he returned to his Fitzroy Engineering workshop in New 7. ‘Len Lye: Shaman, of Motion, p. 88. Artist, Prophet’ 8 energy’. 12. Unpublished and Plymouth to produce another 2.5 metre version of Flip and Two Twisters. Nine in Len Lye, Jean- unsent letter to Michel Bohours and What is this ‘relation to energy’ then? It is the kinetic connection between Philip Leider, months later he perfected a full-scale working model but when Matthews Roger Horrocks, April 1978. eds. Paris: Centre the bodies of sculpture and viewer. Lye’s preferred term for his medium returned to New York to show the results, Lye announced that to get the scale Georges Pompidou, 13. Horrocks, 2000. p. 220. was ‘tangible motion sculpture’, implying physical contact. Of course, in the Biography, p. 355. right for the gallery, the work would have to be at least twice the size.14 That 8. ‘The Art That 14. John Matthews, Moves’ in Figures context of the art gallery, to touch is taboo, and in the case of Trilogy, could interview with the such a thing was even possible was by no means clear, but Matthews, to his of Motion, pp. author, April 25, 84-85. be absolutely fatal. But even as we keep our distance, it is the body that the 2003. credit, did not balk. Instead, he persevered for another year, and with the help

P / 12 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 13 of electronic controls developed in New Plymouth specifically for the work’s 1/20th horsepower motors, the gargantuan Trilogy was realised.15 Lye himself Len Lye’s ‘Trilogy’ was overjoyed that New Zealanders would devote so much time, energy and expense on his behalf. That the gallery is a converted cinema suited Lye (a – An Engineering ‘converted filmmaker’) very well. He wrote to an old friend that the Govett- Brewster ‘happened to show my film and my steel crackerjacks perfectly as if made for the job. Perfect is a word to write a hundred times and it was, I mean, Perspective perfect’.16 The demand to see Trilogy more frequently was at the heart of the Karen Wrigglesworth conception of the Len Lye Centre, a space dedicated to the work and ideas of Writer and engineer, Whanganui, New Zealand this eccentric and ebullient artist. In order to facilitate the work’s continued presentation, the Len Lye Foundation and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery have labored to both preserve the work’s original components, and update its ‘It’s mathematically insoluble’.1 That was the conclusion eminent Christchurch- control systems and mechanics as necessary, while also conserving the work’s based mathematician Cliff Stevenson came to regarding the scaling-up of particular character and magic. Lye’s more utopian visions for his work situated Len Lye’s kinetic sculpture Trilogy when engineer John Matthews approached Trilogy’s figures in complex he called theTemple of Lightning, which included Stevenson for help. Matthews graduated from the University of Canterbury’s rows of Twisters flanking a centralFlip . At the climax of its performance, Lye School of Engineering with a mechanical engineering degree in 1963. In 1974 envisioned a 25 million-volt arc of electricity shooting through Flip and into he volunteered to travel to New York to meet with Lye and, if possible, use his a ’Sun Ball’ 3.5 metres in diameter.17 Even without such high voltage, Trilogy’s engineering expertise to enlarge Lye’s Trilogy from a 2.4 metre high work to 6.7 whirling scimitars and riotous paroxysms are electrifying. And generations of metres. Part of the attraction was that, if this could be achieved, Lye’s work people in New Plymouth have been stopped short by wonder in the presence would then be made available for exhibition in New Zealand, at the Govett- of Trilogy. Inspired in part by this very work, more than a few of them have gone Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth – Matthews’ hometown. on to become artists in their own right – nothing would have pleased Lye more. Lye himself had never received any formal engineering training but as For all the power of Lye’s Trilogy, he always saw it as deeply humanistic, the Stevenson quote illustrates, his kinetic sculptures are as much engineering dedicated to inspiring individual creativity and freedom through an empathic marvels as they are highly innovative works of art. Like artists, engineers vary in transference of art’s wild energies. the focus of their work. Broadly speaking, mechanical engineers design things that move (e.g. motors), while civil engineers – the most common type in New Zealand – design things that don’t move (e.g. roads and bridges). There are also electrical and chemical engineers, as well as more recent hybrids including environmental, mechatronic and biochemical engineers. A commonly held view is that art and engineering are distinct professions that overlap rarely, if at all. Lye, however, embraced engineering as an integral part of his work. He also realised he needed ‘a clever engineer’ to build and maintain his sculptures and this led to his collaboration with Matthews during the 1970s.2 Engineers enjoy technical challenges and Matthews was no 15. Ibid., pp. 355-357. exception. But ‘making a large version of… Trilogy was a nightmare,’ Matthews 16. Letter to Barbara 1. Jim Tucker, ‘Len Ker-Seymor, quoted Trilogy (A Flip and I’ in Live, has admitted, even though he had a small model and long discussions with Lye in Horrocks, and Two Twisters) 106, June/July Biography, p. 364. 3 performing at 2015. p. 20-22. to work from. Govett-Brewster 17. Len Lye, ‘Considering 2. Ibid., p. 19. Art Gallery, 2011 a Temple’ in Figures The new large-scale Trilogy was completed by trial-and-error after hours of Motion, Roger 3. John Matthews, Collection Horrocks and ‘The New Zealand at one of Matthews’ (then) business premises, Fitzroy Engineering Limited, in Govett-Brewster Wystan Curnow, eds. Collection’ in Art Art Gallery/ Auckland: Auckland New Zealand, No. New Plymouth. It duly performed at the Govett-Brewster in Kinetic Works, Lye’s Len Lye Centre University Press, 17, Spring 1980. Photo: Bryan James 1984. p. 88. P. X. first exhibition in his homeland and first survey anywhere in the world. Len and

P / 14 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 15 Ann Lye travelled to New Plymouth for the exhibition opening, and when they saw the sculpture in action for the first time, there were tears all round at what Matthews had achieved. ‘Len was brilliant with materials’, Matthews recalls, ‘He would pick up a piece of metal, shake it, twist it, listen to its resonance and look at its motion behaviour. I found to my surprise that he had little knowledge of engineering: but a deep intuitive understanding of a material’s properties’.4 Lye taught himself about the characteristics of (often scavenged) steels, plastics and wood through play and what he termed ‘doodling’, and came to understand what materials could achieve in terms of shape and motion, and withstand in terms of dynamic stress. He also experimented with motors repurposed from their original tasks in sanding or sewing machines. Engineers, too, spend years learning about materials before designing uses for them. For Lye, the final ‘use’ for each piece of steel, plastic or wood came as a direct result of what he observed it could do. Lye found the material and then designed its performance. Engineers, in contrast, typically decide what must be achieved (e.g. fire resistance) and then select the material to do the job. An integral part of the engineering design process is to model the impact of forces on designs before they are built. Models may be tested in wind tunnels to determine their ability to withstand aerodynamic forces at full-scale, and computer models are now widely used to investigate structural (building), hydraulic (water) and other designs. For the latest version of Lye’s Trilogy, a 2016 refurbishment of the 1977 work for exhibition in the Len Lye Centre, Matthews used a modelling system called finite element analysis to check the location and magnitude of any stresses in the steel elements before the sculpture was deemed robust enough for display. Matthews originally used a rotary slide rule to calculate, in a more basic way, stress analysis information for the 1977 sculpture. The aim with scaling is to achieve similitude (proportional consistency). But scaling a model up to a full-sized structure is not as straightforward as it might seem. There are five scaling parameters to consider, not all of which can be kept to the desired proportions for any one design. Compromise is essential. These five parameters are geometric (having the same height, width, length ratios), static (having the same shape (e.g. how Flip curves) when at rest under gravity), kinematic (the harmonic shapes created when a system is in motion), dynamic (the forces are proportionally of the same magnitude and direction), and acoustic (resonance) similitude. 4. Ibid., p 32. Enlarging each of Lye’s prototype sculptures requires decisions about 5. Shayne Gooch and John Raine, ‘The which characteristics are most important. Shapes of motion (particularly Installation and dynamics and limits wiring plans on the scaling of the harmonic wave patterns) are usually among these. To scale up a kinetic for Albright- a flexible kinetic Knox Art Gallery sculpture’ in sculpture without introducing excessive stress, a trade-off can be that installation, 1965 Proceedings of the Institution 5 Len Lye Foundation the harmonics change or become unacceptably small. Similarly, using of Mechanical Collection, Engineers, Vol. 214, Govett-Brewster improved-strength materials such as laminates reduces resonance (sound) Part C, 2000. p. 538. Art Gallery/ 6 Len Lye Centre 6. Ibid., p 540. performance. The single, double and triple harmonic wave patterns that Lye

P / 16 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 17 often designed for in his work are called resonant vibrations. Ordinary vibrations characteristics Lye required, and Matthews knew he would have to start over are like the normal bouncing a child experiences on a trampoline. Resonant when the basic design parameters were resolved. The final material chosen vibrations are like the double bounce effect when one child times their bounce – and used in the current version of Trilogy as well as the 1977 version – is a to cause a friend to bounce extra high. From an engineering perspective the Swedish compressor flap valves anddoctor’s blade stainless steel made by need to maintain resonant vibration conditions (e.g. in the Trilogy’s Twisters) is Uddeholm. This steel is so hard that special tools are required to cut it. It is unusual.7 made from traditional steel with silicon, carbon, nickel and chromium added, Lye wanted to create and celebrate resonance, but engineers usually and is cold-rolled to compress the molecules together and build a tension work hard to avoid it or at least minimise (dampen) it as much as possible. between them, causing the steel to harden. Spring steels have a very high yield In engineering structures, resonance causes extreme fatigue or stress in strength, which means they can deform and return to their original shape many materials, which in turn results in premature (and potentially catastrophic) times over before their inherent material properties are altered. 7. Ibid., p 544. design failure. Resonance can be caused by wind gusts on tall buildings, or by Trilogy performs through control of the torque (the forces causing 8. John Raine. Personal correspondence with seismic (earthquake) loadings, among other things. In the U.S.A., the Tacoma rotation) and speed of each Twister and Flip. The three are operated the author, 7 July 2016. Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) famously collapsed in 1940 due to ‘aeroelastic independently of one another by 1/20th horsepower direct current motors 9. John Raine, J. Harrington, E. Webb, flutter’, which is a type of vibration failure (although not resonant vibration made by Bodine in America. When the rare quadruple harmonics occur, the and Z. Meredith, ‘Expanding Universe: failure). And in 1831, the Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester, England, Twisters are rotating at 800 r.p.m., twice the speed of the triples. The brake- Design Study for Scaling up a collapsed due to resonance caused by troops marching across it. clutch unit driving Trilogy is made by another American company called Kinetic Sculpture’ in Journal of To manage the engineering aspects of Lye’s sculpture, the Len Lye Electroid. This is the same company that made the original mechanism that Engineering Design, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1996. Foundation has grown a strong relationship with the University of Canterbury Matthews included in Trilogy in 1977. p. 397-410. in Christchurch, where Matthews completed his degree and in 2015 received In 1977 the choreography or sequence of movements in each Trilogy 10. Gooch and Raine, op. cit. p. 537-548. an Honorary Doctorate. The university’s first task was to determine ‘what performance was controlled by 22 rotary switches, which are now operated 11. Tim Spencer, Design of Len Lye’s would happen upon breakage of the … [Twister] or … [Flip], most particularly by a programmable-logic computer. Each performance is unique. The work’s ‘Blade’ at the 8 largest economic the vertical ones [the Twisters] as they rotated quite quickly’. Dr. John Raine motive power is only just strong enough to drive the work, which means that size. Master’s Thesis, University completed the required calculations and determined that should the Twisters at times the work can overpower the motors. It is a fine balance. As Lye put it, of Canterbury collection, 2014 break during a performance, they would simply fall to the floor rather than ‘industrial timers and electronic programmers are what brush, paint and canvas and Shayne Gooch and John Raine, The spinning out into the crowd. Some years later, when the sculpture did break, the are to the painter; chisel, welding torch and casting material are to the sculptor; Engineering Design 14 of a Vibrating Twister fell exactly as predicted. pencil and paper to the poet; or musical instruments to the composer’. Kinetic Sculpture. Vibrations Since Trilogy, university staff and postgraduate students have worked Len Lye would undoubtedly be delighted with the unlikely synergy that Association of New 9 Zealand Inc. 14th on a number of Lye’s other sculptures, including Universe (1996) , Blade (as Big has evolved between engineering and art in New Plymouth. Arguably, it was Annual Conference, 10 11 Christchurch, 2003. Blade, 1997) , Blade enlarged to its maximum economic size (2014) , and a one- Lye’s limited access to engineering expertise and money far more than the 12. Charlie Gates, fifth scale version ofSun, Land and Sea (as Snake God and Snake Goddess or technically inferior materials he had to work with that constrained Lye’s ‘It ripples, waves and shoots out God of the Sea and Cave Goddess, 2016).12 Each work poses unique problems achievements during his lifetime. New Plymouth has proven that where there is a 3m lightning bolt – Len Lye’s that require out-of-the-box engineering expertise to resolve. In addition to a will, the traditional gap between engineering and art can be overcome – and, giant sculpture sparks to life for design challenges when scaling up Lye’s kinetic sculptures, engineers must more importantly, it can produce outstanding benefits for both engineers and the first time.’ www.stuff.co.nz. also consider the impact these works will have on the places where they are lovers of modern and contemporary art. 7 April 2016 and Alex O’Keefe, installed. Trilogy, for example, is a violent work. ‘When Trilogy was mounted in Determining the feasibility of the [Govett-Brewster] Gallery [in 1977], its energy was so great that the main building Len Lye’s kinetic artwork roof beam cracked and had to be braced’.13 ‘Sun, Land and Sea’ Doctor of Philosophy During the 1970s, Matthews was well aware of the differences in Thesis, University of Canterbury characteristics between one type of steel and another. He originally built a collection, 2015. 13. Roger Horrocks, Art full-sized test version of Trilogy from a stainless steel called Type 304, which That Moves: The Work of Len Lye, Auckland, is relatively inexpensive and could be replaced as the trials in the design of University Press, 2009. p. 217. the work developed. But the steel didn’t exhibit the springiness and sound 14. Ibid., p. 179.

P / 18 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 19 Engineering notes for ‘Flip’, c. 1965 Len Lye Foundation Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/ Len Lye Centre

P / 20 ‘Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters)’, 1977/2016 performing at Govett-Brewster Len Lye, Snowbirds Art Gallery/Len Making Snow (Jam Lye Centre, 2016 Session), 1936 Collection Len Lye Foundation Govett-Brewster Collection, Art Gallery/ Govett-Brewster Len Lye Centre Fountain I, 1961 Art Gallery/ Private Collection Len LyePhoto: BryanCentre James

P / 23 ‘Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters)’, 1977/2016 performing at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, 2016 Collection Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/ Len Lye Centre Photo: Bryan James

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters) P / 25 ‘Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters)’, 1977/2016 performing at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, 2016 Collection Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Photo: Leith Robertson

P / 26 Len Lye Trilogy (A Flip and Two Twisters)

Edited: Paul Brobbel Design: Jason Treweek and Shabnam Shiwan Photography: Bryan James and Leith Robertson

© 2016 Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and writers

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