The Great Breeze of Language

A couple of weeks ago I visited Te Papa and discovered that John Reynolds' work Cloud has been installed up in the top gallery. I'd read lots about the work but nothing compared with standing beneath the piece, looking at it swirling around the walls.

Just breath-taking. It did for me that day everything that great art should - took me out of my head and the worries that I had that day and into a totally different place where I was spell bound by the ideas and visual images in it.

The work is a series of small canvases which Reynolds has written words on from Harry Orsman's New Zealand Dictionary - all words that are a special part of our version of the English language - and then he has formed them into a enormous cloud of words. Our very own land of the long white cloud - a great breeze of our language.

See it here on a blog announcement from Te Papa. It even has a short clip from You Tube of John Reynolds talking about the installation of the work.

Be warned though - this is only a pale introduction to the real thing - it really has to be seen! If you are in Wellington made sure you make a bee line there before it leaves at the end of August.