17 Facts About Christine Hellyar

Christine Hellyar was born on 1947 and is a New Zealand artist who makes sculptures and installations.

Christine Hellyar completed a Diploma in Fine Arts at the Elam School of Art in 1970, where she primarily focused on sculpture incorporating landscapes and landforms.

Christine Hellyar was drawn to the properties of the medium, which allowed for precise replication of texture and details, and used latex to cast objects such as leaves and pine cones.

Christine Hellyar moved to Cornwall in the United Kingdom in 1974, later moving to Scotland where she lived from 1977 to 1978, before returning to New Zealand.

Writer Warwick Brown describes a 'memorable 1979 exhibition' where Christine Hellyar showed '70 small, soft sculptures made of stitched, unbleached calico enclosing various natural materials.

In 1982 Christine Hellyar had an exhibition called Shelter at the Auckland City Art Gallery.

Art historian Anne Kirker notes that by the time of her 1985 Aprons exhibition in Wellington, Christine Hellyar was seen as 'one of the country's most thought-provoking and innovative sculptors'.

Christine Hellyar continues today to work across sculpture and installation.

In 2015 Christine Hellyar collaborated with artists Maureen Lander and Jo Torr on an exhibition Tell Tails at the National Library of New Zealand.

In late 2017 Christine Hellyar presented the exhibition Looking, Seeing, Thinking at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery.

Christine Hellyar is particularly interested in what Europeans brought into the Pacific at that time, and what they took, including the development of museum collections that map objects into hierarchies through museum processes of naming, sorting and display.

Christine Hellyar lectured at the Gippsland Institute of Higher Education in 1980 and was senior lecturer at Elam from 1981 to 1996.

Anne Kirker noted in her 1986 history of New Zealand women artists that Christine Hellyar had 'earned a reputation as a teacher and is one of the few women to be employed as such at either of the two university art schools in this country'.

Christine Hellyar has exhibited consistently in New Zealand and internationally since the 1970s.

In 2005 Christine Hellyar participated in the Tylee Cottage Residency at Whanganui's Sarjeant Gallery and in 2011 the resident botanic artist at the Auckland Botanic Gardens.

Christine Hellyar's work is held in many New Zealand public collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Art historian Michael Dunn feels that Christine Hellyar's art is influenced by pop art and Don Driver, and notes that Christine Hellyar's conservationist values present in her works.