Born in 1957 in Balclutha, to Dutch immigrant parents, Henk Van Der Vis is a self-taught artist. With a lifelong interest in music and an early career in car racing, he learned that if he wanted something, he had to either fix/modify or build it. An avid reader, over the years he taught himself many skills, including welding, woodwork and metalwork. After later training as a relationship counsellor, he looked to pursue what had been a life-long interest in sculpture.
A long-term resident of Port Chalmers, Van Der Vis’ fascination with the Royal Albatross that he regularly watched effortlessly circling around Taiaroa Head, led to his first kinetic work completed in 2015. After extensive research and utilising his learned engineering skills, he combined the native timbers that he loves with copper and brass to create a Toroa that is anatomically correct and closely simulates its movement in flight.
Over the next 10 years, as time permitted, Van Der Vis completed 5 more kinetic works, all of which are included in this exhibition. In creating each of these, he maintained the same primary objective – to combine anatomical realism with mechanical movement that accurately reflects the subject of the work. Each idea for a new work introduced new challenges, and required further extensive research and much trial and error. Materials selected for each component part had to be suited to the purpose – it had to be sympathetic to the subject matter, robust and also beautiful. The resulting works are comprised of handmade components, many of which have measurements with tolerances as low as 0.5mm.