Guy Ngan is a significant New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, and has a range of work across a large range of media, including sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

, painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

, design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

 and architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

. He is known for his incorporation of Māori

Maori culture

Māori culture is the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, an Eastern Polynesian people, and forms a distinctive part of New Zealand culture. Within the Māori community, and to a lesser extent throughout New Zealand as a whole, the word Māoritanga is often used as an approximate synonym for Māori...

 motifs such as the tiki

Tiki

Tiki refers to large wood and stone carvings of humanoid forms in Central Eastern Polynesian cultures of the Pacific Ocean. The term is also used in Māori mythology where Tiki is the first man, created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne. He found the first woman, Marikoriko, in a pond – she seduced him...

. Many of his works are in prominent places like the tapestry at the beehive and sculpture at the Reserve Bank, and many others are dotted around the country in obscure places like the entrance to Stokes Valley.

Guy Ngan was born in Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

 in 1926, to Chinese

Han Chinese

Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...

 parents, but calls himself "Pacific Chinese". He spent time in China before returning to New Zealand and then studying art in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He has been a significant presence in the New Zealand art scene, and was director of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts from 1976 to 1986. In 2006 a major retrospective of his work was held at the Wellington City Art Gallery

City Gallery Wellington

The City Gallery Wellington is an art gallery in Wellington, New Zealand. The gallery was first opened in 1980 in a different building.-Features:...

. As of 2010 Guy Ngan lives in Stokes Valley

Stokes Valley

Stokes Valley is a major suburb of Lower Hutt, in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located at the northeastern edge of the city seven kilometres northeast of the city centre, in the valley of a small tributary of the Hutt River, called Stokes Valley stream which flows north to meet the main...

 and has lived in the valley for approximately 50 years. Guy Ngan created the sculpture that resides at the entrance to Stokes Valley and has recently been commissioned by the Lower Hutt City Council to design and build another large sculpture for the Stokes Valley shopping centre.

External links

• Works in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
• Article entitled: "Guy Ngan: Unsung Master at City Gallery"
• Retrospective exhibition at the Wellington City Art Gallery
• Retrospective exhibition review
• Guy Ngan tapestries hanging in the Beehive
  Beehive (building)
  The Beehive is the common name for the Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings, located at the corner of Molesworth Street and Lambton Quay, Wellington...
  
   with Queen Elizabeth II in the foreground