Ancient, Irresistible Forces In Greenstone Sculptures

West Coast born and bred, Ian Boustridge as a child was fascinated by his grandfather’s jade pebble collection and his father’s greenstone tiki pendant.The translucency, feel and cool greenness of these treasures spoke to him of an ancient and irresistible force, akin to Maori belief in the sacred power of pounamu. Attending Greymouth High School, Ian was further captivated by the secrets of the ultramafic stone by his mentor Yvonne Rust, who helped set him on course in a career as a jade sculptor. He held his first solo exhibition at the COCA Gallery in 1976 at the age of just 21 and in later years has shown and sold his work widely in Europe, the USA and Asia. From 20 November to 9 December this year, Ian returns for only his second exhibition in Christchurch at COCA with his latest works in greenstone sculpture, including the examples shown on this page. “It has been a long time between exhibits, but the process of learning about Jade and discovering its hidden qualities has never stopped,” he says. “While running the Jade Boulder Gallery in Greymouth for the past 16 years, I have also devoted a lot of my time to locating the best stone in Westland and developing sculpting styles and methods to bring it to life.” What has evolved is his unique ability to transform the stone into forms and designs that cannot be predicted or ordained.Jade, Ian says, only reveals its inner secrets to those who learn to work with it, not against it. Those secrets tell of physical and spiritual forces that shaped New Zealand and whose colours, textures and forms are vividly expressed in his works of art. Each example of his craft is a by-product of an exploration process which can take hundreds of hours to complete.

The tendril sculpture took Ian over 1,000 hours to finish, starting as a 100kg Jade boulder and ending as sinuous coil in three dimensions that can be played as a percussion instrument. Its ability to produce near perfect tones is derived from its unique shape and structural integrity of the highest quality of Marsden-type greenstone.

In the 31 years since his first exhibition, Ian’s highly sought-after pieces have undergone something of a metamorphosis  –  not unlike the ancient stone itself. “Over the years I have sold works to many offshore investors in jade sculptures and they are held in private collections from New York to Tokyo to London,” he said. “The items featuring in this local exhibition are selected from a range of recent works, some of them commissioned and some as yet unsold.”

The exhibition theme of ‘Chaos and Creation’ is particularly apt for presenting Ian’s work in jade, a tough, fibrous stone formed in the chaos of tectonic upheaval and exposed by glaciers and rivers. Then, millions of years later, the same material crafted by a jade master sculptor into objects that are nothing short of visually and aesthetically stunning.