Len Lye: energies

The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand presents the largest exhibition to date of work by Len Lye, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant twentieth-century artists. Opening on 5 December 2026 and on display until 26 April 2027, the exhibition titled Energies features over 100 works by the late artist, occupying the entirety of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Centre. Len Lye (1901–1980, b. Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand), is regarded as a trailblazing figure in kinetic sculpture and experimental filmmaking. Across the late 1920s–30s in London his camera-less ‘scratch films’ were critically acclaimed, while in the 1960s in New York he became renowned for his groundbreaking kinetic sculptures. While Lye lived abroad for most of his career as an expatriate artist in Sāmoa, Sydney, London and New York, his preoccupation with energetic forces was shaped by his early life in remote Aotearoa New Zealand, with its wild island coasts, cyclical tides, and seismic–volcanic terrain. Curated by Anna Briers, Len Lye: energies charts Lye’s artistic legacy across six decades of experimental practice. At the centre of the exhibition is the highly anticipated return of Trilogy (a flip and two twisters) (1977), a cacophony of electrical energy and 12 metres of choreographed steel that is widely considered Lye’s magnum opus. This will be presented alongside eleven other kinetic ‘tangible motion’ sculptures by the artist, the most ever collectively displayed. The exhibition features paintings, batiks, and camera-less films rendered through the direct application of scratches and paint onto celluloid. Also on display are selected works from the Len Lye Foundation archive, such as early motion sketches, animation plans, and speculative concept drawings. Curator Anna Briers said: “Len Lye was an effervescent and original thinker, whose cross-disciplinary approach reveals an interest in energy in all its forms, from the microbial metabolisms of early life on Earth to the quantum entanglements of particles in space, and the ocean of electromagnetic waves surrounding us. Lye’s practice can be experienced by audiences as a relational exchange of energy between art objects and bodies. Through the allure of movement and with electricity as a collaborator, his works reveal a universal pulse that underpins all matter held in a state of constant vibration.” The exhibition spans from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery into the Patterson Associates-designed Len Lye Centre, Aotearoa New Zealand’s first single artist gallery and an international destination for experimental film and kinetic art. The building’s reflective colonnade façade, manufactured locally using stainless steel, takes inspiration from Lye’s innovations in kinetics and light. Director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre Megan Dunn said: “Energies is the most substantial presentation of Len Lye’s work we’ve ever been able to show, filling every exhibition space across the Art Gallery and the Centre we built to hold his legacy. Lye’s sculptures don’t really exist in photographs – you have to stand in the room while Trilogy is performing to experience its scale and feel what he meant by energy. That’s why we want the Len Lye Centre to be a destination, not just for Taranaki, but for anyone who wants to properly understand Lye’s extraordinary practice.”