Flat Out

Bill Culbert lives in Europe, but gathered the window frames for Flat Out during one of his regular visits to New Zealand. He found them in one of the last remaining demolition yards for wooden villas, Auckland’s predominant turn-of-the-century architectural style. Culbert arranged his ‘Avondale frames’ in divisions of a whole, as half and quarter frames, installed flat to the wall and split by horizontal lines of neon tubing.

Flat Out expands the tools of perspective used in painting to create a ‘window’ onto another world. Culbert’s reflective glass directs us back towards our own world, and to the grids and surfaces of modern abstract painting. By juxtaposing windowpanes which let light in and neon which projects light, he foregrounds his interest in both natural and artificial light.

Culbert is interested in light’s sources and how they exemplify the ways in which we see. Windows, frames and apertures have featured in his work since the late 1960s, and through them he creates a physical space and direction for light. Using domestic window frames, he recalls an everyday experience of light.

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