Original tapestry back in the foyer of the Beehive
Something significant but unsung happened at the Beehive this month. Off the wall for 20 years, the textile work Forest in the Sun by Joan Calvert and Guy Ngan was restored to the two-storied marble wall in the foyer of the Beehive.
The Beehive for many is a bastion of politics. However, at the time it was built it was also a bastion for art, craft and design. The Government and the architects wanted to ensure the building could be a flagship of New Zealand’s creativity.
Every inch of its interior was attended to: The finishes, artworks, softfurnishings, furniture, lamps, signage, menus and even coasters were all carefully considered and custom-made.
Two centre pieces of this design were to be the works commissioned for the Beehive foyer and the banqueting hall. Both were selected through a closed competition between invited artists, judged by a panel who included the government architect, the QEII Arts Council and two practising artists.
For the foyer, calls were sent to senior weavers for “the proposed commissioning of a hand-woven tapestry or wall hanging for the beehive”.
The chosen weavers could work with artists and/or wider weaving groups, and the winning work was a proposal by eminent weaver Joan Calvert in collaboration with artist Guy Ngan.
The commission fee for the work, inclusive of all costs, was a staggeringly low $4000 for a work of monumental scale to hang on the grey marble wall that backed the grand staircase.
Forest in the Sun 1976 was designed to be perfectly in tune with the architecture, scale, and importance of this site. It was the largest project Calvert had ever undertaken.
It was a remarkable achievement of collaboration. Calvert’s skills were paramount as she interpreted and translated into fibre a concept and design by sculptor and designer Ngan.
The hanging consisted of six adjacent panels, each 2.4 metres square in a horizontal T-shape.
Bursting with colour, the woollen wall hanging was intended to evoke the experience of a walk through native bush and looking up through a canopy of trees to be dazzled by sunlight filtering down.
The design perfectly addressed its subject while taking into consideration the restrictions of the site.
The work had to be welcoming, look good from a distance, but also have interest when closely viewed. It needed to be weighty enough to withstand drafts, but not too heavy.
To this end the cell-like holes form a crucial role in helping the work meld to the wall and lighten the load.
Most particularly it needed to fit the curve of the marble surface. As a result of these restrictions Calvert designed the work in parts with 5cm between each, enabling them to complete a whole and be suspended from narrow, aluminium rods.
The piece took 18 months to make, and Calvert enlisted the help of two others – Jean Ngan and Dorothea Turner, who undertook the laborious process of knotting two panels each over an eightmonth period.
In 1977 the work was hung in readiness for the formal opening of the building by Queen Elizabeth.
The hanging when installed was to be as permanent as the building itself. Sadly, like so many other works of this period, in 2003 (25 years later) when the Beehive was being refurbished, the work was removed and donated to Te Papa.
Disappearing into storage, it was not seen again until it was loaned to the Dowse Art Gallery as part of a Guy Ngan exhibition in 2019 – some 15 years after it was decommissioned.
Forest in the Sun is a perfect example of a site-specific work that, like so many of the works of this era, have been removed, lost, hidden or destroyed.
When Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand was formed in 2017, we set about connecting with Te Papa and Parliamentary Service to see if the work could be returned. A huge thank you to Dame Fran Wilde, who helped get this under way.
What a thrill to see it in all its splendour returned to its original site, and in time for the launch of Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand’s website – containing New Zealand’s first national register of 20th-century public art.