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Albatross in an unusual work. In Lye’s other kinetic sculptures the ‘elements’ that vibrate are usually made from highly polished steel. These vibrating strips and rods form ‘figures of motion’ – virtual images that reflect patterns of light. By contrast, Albatross employs a slender and delicate wooden ‘wing’ balanced on a painted metal shaft. As the shaft spins and vibrates it causes the wing to flutter and rotate. Albatross is more an actual wing than a virtual one.
Lye experimented extensively with ideas and materials. He completed the original Albatross in New York in 1965 and described it as:
“…a long sliver of spruce, very springy wood, about the most springy and it’s tapered at both ends something like a thin pointed boomerang and it bounces on a shaft of a motor on a little holding arrangement… [I]t runs free but momentum start to turn this sliver and it starts to wave, just like a spirit of a winged Albatross.”
Lye was fascinated by Polynesian culture: its dance, its artefacts (the Australian boomerang) and its mythology. He studied and drew from these cultures extensively. There are colonies of Albatross in New Zealand and Māori refer to them in their legends and songs. Although Lye wandered extensively spending most of his life ‘over seas’, Albatross is a reminder of his antipodean roots.
Albatross was reconstructed in 2015 and first shown at the Len Lye Centre in the exhibition, ‘Flora and Fauna’.
See http://www.govettbrewster.com/exhibitions/len-lye-flora-and-fauna
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Albatross in flight at the Len Lye Centre, January, 2016
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