Big Rooster, 2023Painted corrugated iron720 x 550 x 180mm Price on request Hen Head Up, 2023Painted corrugated iron550 x 420 x 160mmPrice on request Pecking Hen, 2023Painted corrugated iron480 x 330 x 200mm Price on request Jeff Thomson has had a long career exploring the possibilities and boundaries of corrugated iron. He is well known for his quirky, creative endeavours such as the giant gumboot in Taihape and HQ Holden, now in Te Papa Tongarewa. But there has also been a steady pattern of Thomson’s curiosity about and exploration of the animal kingdom. Here, despite the supposed rigidity of this roofing material, he is able to display the idiosyncratic postures and personalities of each animal with remarkable acuity and playfulness. As writer and curator Gregory O’Brian has written: “Thomson revels in his chosen material’s refusal to be anything but what it is. Even in seemingly figurative works...that seem, with age, to accrue their own personalities, the iron is never disguised or obscured.”
