Bev Goodwin and Jeff Thomson
Bev Goodwin was born Pio Pio, King Country, spent 20 years living and working in Florence, Italy, and moved to Auckland in the early 1990s. She has worked as a visual artist for over 50 years, many years as a graphic artist and the designer for the Auckland Festival of Photography. Since 2016 she has been part of a group of artists who manage Arthaus Gallery in Ōrākei, Auckland. Bev is concerned by environmental issues and mass consumerism and much of her work is informed by this.
Jeff Thomson was born in Auckland and completed a BFA at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland specialising in painting and printmaking in 1981. He was awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at Otago University, Dunedin in 1995, and the Tylee Cottage Artist in Residency in Wanganui in 2000. He has worked as a full-time sculptor since 1985, exhibiting widely throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, and has had several solo exhibitions in Germany and France. Jeff works and lives in Helensville.
Bev Goodwin and Jeff Thomson’s work Ferrous Botanical is made up of about 100 individual pieces. Each is made from hot-dipped galvanised steel rod that has been painted, bent, twisted and curved to create, when all put together, an artificial garden that has been sited to echo the near-by curved hedging. Inspired by the flora in the Auckland Botanic Gardens native plant area, it is a garden sculpture direct from the artists’ imagination. The work attempts to exemplify how nature constructs ingenious structures and forms. It is the second time these artists have worked together on a project for Sculpture in the Gardens.