Gothic 20
‘Gothic 20’, a concrete sculpture made in 1969 by Eric Flegg. Flegg was a working potter and art education lecturer here at Te Whare Wananga o Waikato. With a diploma of design and an art teacher’s diploma from English Colleges he joined the staff of Hamilton Teachers’ College in 1968 where he became Head of Art.
‘Gothic 20’ is a move away from the artists medium of choice, pottery. As a founding member and tutor of the Hamilton Potters Workshop, for years he was heavily influential on the Waikato potting scene. Here within the university he even set up the original clay studio, which he used as part of his own practice as well as being beneficial to garnering interest in clay work with primary school students. Further afield he exhibited at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1966 and 1967 and in 1983 was appointed as chairman of the Northern Regional arts council, a position he held until 1990.
So why the foray into cement sculpture? In truth little is actually known about this piece and Flegg’s intentions. It is a marked difference from his pottery which exhibited his interest in New Zealand geology. Gothic 20 hints at the gothic architectural design common in the 12th to 16th centuries in Western Europe and revived in the mid 18th to early 20th centuries globally. The colonisation of New Zealand from the 1840s required new buildings so the British settlers adopted revivalist architecture, mirroring the architecture of their former home. British architect Augutus Pugin successfully promoted the gothic style as more English and spiritual, and influenced key figures such as New Zealand’s first Anglican Bishop George Selwyn and architect Benjamin Mountfort. The impact of which is evident across the country, but is highly concentrated in Christchurch where Mountford was the key “gothic revival” architect.
Fast forward to the 1960s where television and jet travel connected our small island nation to the rest of the world in a way that was never seen before. Protests, pop culture, sport, cultural resurgence, immigration, the peak and end of the baby boom, our wool exports and the global economy; providing ample fodder for artists. The New Zealand scene was dynamic as numerous ‘ism’ art movements influenced the enthusiastic creatives, from cubism and expressionism to modernism and abstractionism. Flegg’s ‘Gothic 20’ demonstrated this in his abstraction of some of the classic elements of the Gothic style.
A primary feature of the Gothic style is tall, thin pointed arches. This accentuated a second favoured element of height, as tall windows and ceilings were desirable. To support such structures a third element of the style was employed, the barrel vault, a criss-crossed construction to support the roof. While these are not all the elements of the Gothic style, they are demonstrated in the piece as two tall archways twist into each other, almost as if in an embrace, with the most notable component of gothic architecture noticeably missing - the stained glass window. The negative and positive spaces are reminiscent of other New Zealand modernist sculptures of the 1950s and 60s. Whether the piece is a nod to Flegg’s british roots or a fleeting interest in architectural sculpture, it is intriguing that ‘Gothic 20’ sits across from Donn Ratana’s Export Butter sculpture. While almost four decades apart, they both reference our relationship with Britain and its impacts.