Don Driver

Don Driver is regarded as one of New Zealand’s most significant and challenging contemporary artists. He was born in 1930 in Hastings, and has been resident in New Plymouth since childhood. Driver was largely self-taught, having received no formal school or tertiary art education. However, since his early beginnings as an artist he has been an astute and avid reader of modern art traditions, with his exploration into the nature of ‘art’ producing some of the most compelling and significant art/sculpture to emerge in the contemporary New Zealand art arena.

Driver’s work has evolved along several routes as he experimented freely with both media and form. The diversity of his oeuvre has been motivated by his constant efforts to define the boundaries of art and to discover its unique ability to transform the apparently banal and everyday into something quite uniquely powerful and ‘other’.

In Driver’s early work of the 1960’s, this took the form of a ‘primitivising’ tendency not unlike that evident in the sculpture of Henry Moore and Chadwick. Driver’s fascination for non-western art, particularly that of African and Asian art also saw the beginnings of Driver’s own personal collection. In the later 1960’s, however, Driver abandoned the overtly ‘primitivistic’ nature of his early work, turning his attention to the production of powerful combinations of ordinary everyday objects, such as signs and symbols. This focus on the transformative power of materials led him to contemplate the key elements of art itself, that is, colour, shape, form and composition/arrangement. The media that Driver utilised for his works is uniquely diverse, resulting in his bizarre and often unsettling ‘combines’ or assemblages to that of pure abstraction and relief.

Driver’s work has received a variety of awards and grants and is well represented in major public and private collections. He was the recipient of a QEII Arts Council International Study grant and a New Zealand/Australia Foundation Study grant, which lead to his residency at the University of Tasmania in 1994. Previously, he was awarded the Caltex sponsored NZ Academy of Fine Arts Award (1991), BP art award (1987) and the Sarjeant Gallery Whanganui Art Award (1984). In the 1970s he received several QE Arts Council art awards, the Hansells Sculpture Award and the Benson and Hedges art award.

Driver’s work has been in numerous solo exhibitions in institutions such as the Auckland City Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster, Sarjeant Gallery, Manawatu, and Wellington City Art Gallery. Further, Driver has participated in several key and definitive NZ art group shows including Headlands: Thinking through NZ Art (1992), A Decade of Assemblage (1992) and When Art Hits the Headlines (1987). He also exhibited on numerous occasions with the historic Group 60 shows that date from the late 1960s as well as being chosen to represent NZ in several Australian Biennales.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS AT ARTIS

2000 – Symbols and Signs, ARTIS Gallery, Auckland

Awards

1953 – Sculpture Prize, Auckland Birthday Carnival
1971 – QE ll Arts Council Award
1972 – Winner Benson and Hedges Art Award
1974 – Winner Hansells Sculpture Award
1978 – QE ll Arts Council Award
1984 – QE ll Arts Council Travel Grant
QE ll Arts Council Purchase Grant
Winner Wanganui Art Award
1986 – Purchase Award, Goodman Suter Biennale
1987 – Winner BP Art Award
1988 – QE ll Arts Council Studio Grant
1990 – Pacesetters Award
1991 – Winner, Caltex Award
1994 – QE ll Arts Council International Study Grant New Zealand/Australia Foundation Study Grant
1999 – The Special Jury Award Visa Gold

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2006 – Don Driver, Marshall Seifert Gallery, Dunedin
2002 – Second Generation, ARTIS Gallery, Auckland
Assembly, Sargent Gallery, Wanganui
2001 – Don Driver 1985 – 2001, Diversion Gallery, Blenheim
2000 – Symbols and Signs, ARTIS Gallery, Auckland
Wall Works, Milford Gallery, Dunedin
Paint & Collage, Brooke-Gifford Gallery,Auckland
1999/01 – With Spirit, Touring Retrospective
1999 – Ways with Collage, Artscape, Palmerston North
1998 – Faces of Don Driver, One Eye Gallery, Paekakariki
1997 – Faces of Don Driver, Information Center, New Plymouth
1996 – Circular Planes, Lopdell House, Auckland
1995 – Circular Planes, Robert McDougall Gallery, Christchurch
Selection, Milford House, Dunedin
1994 – Wall Sculpture, Hangings and Collages, Dick Bett Gallery, Hobart, Australia
Works on Paper – Collages from the Warrior’s series – Warwick Brown Gallery, Auckland
1993 – The Last Ten Years and More, New Plymouth
Don Driver in the Round, Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui
Dowse Art Gallery, Lower Hutt
1992 – A Decade of Assemblage, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Selections from a Decade of Assemblage, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, Wellington
1991 – Survey, Bath House, Rotorua
Warriors, Waiariki Polytechnic, Rotorua
1990 – Print Show, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth

Commissions

1966 – New Plymouth Airport Mural
1967 – New Plymouth McKechnies Administration Block Mural
Sculpture for Govett – Brewster Art Gallery Courtyard
1972 – Auckland Medical School, Sculpture
1975 – Auckland Medical School Courtyard
Cosmos, Auckland Medical School, Installation
1981 – Dowse Art Museum Birthday Banner
1982 – Christchurch, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Birthday Graphic
Auckland Architecture School Mural
Auckland, Peter Webb Galleries, At the Beach
1983 – New Plymouth, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Mural Scheme
1987 – Auckland, Albert Dental Services, Duraband 5
1989 – Auckland, Muka Studios, Prints
1992 – Auckland, Muka Studios, Prints
1993 – Auckland, Muka Studio, Prints
1994/5/6 Dilana Rugs, Five Designs
1995 – Nelson, Fifeshire Foundation, Maskeraid

Collections

Rutherford Trust Collection, Wellington
Petrocorp Collection, New Plymouth
Parliamentary Loans Collections, Wellington
Chartwell Collection, Wellington
Hocken Library, Dunedin
Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch
Rotorua Museum of Art and History
Fletcher Collection, Fletcher House, Auckland
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Robert McDougall Art Gallery
Waikato Museum of Art and History
Auckland City Art Gallery
Hawkes Bay Art Gallery and Museum, Napier
Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth
Victoria University Collection, Wellington
Dowse Art Gallery, Lower Hutt
National Gallery, Wellington
Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui
Stichbury Group, Auckland
James Wallace Trust, Auckland