Terry Stringer is a leading New Zealand sculptor. He trained at New Zealand’s premier art school, Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. He graduated with Honours in 1967 and in the following years received virtually every significant scholarship and award available to New Zealand artists. In the late 1970s he was awarded the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship three times.

He is a key figure in the history of art in New Zealand, a sculptor with an established reputation. This was acknowledged in 2003 when he was the recipient of his country’s national honour, the ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit).

His signature works have become synonymous with high profile public sites throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. These include The Risen Christ in Christchurch's Cathedral Square, his Grand Head in Wellington, and Auckland city’s iconic Mountain Fountain. His piece The World Grasped graces Newmarket, Auckland's most affluent retail precinct. The award winning sculptural architecture he jointly designed in 2001 as the gallery for his sculpture park Zealandia, has become a symbol of New Zealand’s finest art.

Throughout his career Stringer has exhibited extensively, with solo shows in Auckland, New Zealand, Sydney, Australia, Hong Kong, London, England and in the United States. He lives and works at his sculpture garden Zealandia, north of Auckland, New Zealand.

Dr Robin Woodward
Department of Art History
University of Auckland

The works created by Stringer are extremely complex and take an artist with total control of his medium to realize, the suggestion and illusion he is striving to create for the viewer is carefully conceptualized and requires some effort from his audience to engage with the work to gain the promised reward.

In this exhibition Stringer utilizes painted theatrical backdrops to provide some depth to his sculptures and to add to the sense of drama Stringer would like to engender. This additional element also provides his work with an enlivening aspect taking his work from the realm of inorganic objects cast in metal to organic beings existing in their own world.

The exhibition remains at Koru Contemporary Art til 21st of August 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue available from the gallery.

Guest of Honour:
Adele Bryant, New Zealand Consul-General in Hong Kong

Wine Tasting:
Sponsor: At Style Wine
NZ wine tasting