BORN AGAIN
Like most modern love stories, Sam met Gloria online. As he tells it, it was love at first sight. He didn’t mind that Gloria was a little worse for wear, that she was from a town he’d never heard of, or that Gloria wasn’t Gloria yet, she was actually Andrew. Or, more accurately, St Andrew’s. Or rather, she used to be St Andrew’s, until she lost her name in 2018 when she was deconsecrated.
Nameless and faithless, the West Coast church had sat on the market for over a year without anyone swiping right. The building even looked broken-hearted, with two lines of lichen running down the facade beneath her cross, giving the impression the old church was crying.
Then, a miracle. Along came Wellington-based artist Sam Duckor-Jones with a van full of tinsel and 16 litres of pink paint in a shade called “Smitten”.
Sam is perhaps best known for his large ceramic sculptures of naked men. Unlike the sculptures of the Renaissance, all chisel and sinew, Sam’s men are indoorsy types — thin armed, long fingered, standing around awkwardly as if not quite sure what to do with their hands or limbs. They tend to be brightly painted: pink, purple, yellow, gold. Some are covered head to toe in multicoloured spots. Their heads always a little small for their bodies, their expressions slightly bewildered. They are amorphous figures that embody both joy and sadness, an axis of feeling that can hold a mirror to the mood or outlook of the viewer.
