Bodyscape - Waiheke Island sculpture and fine art studio.
Media reviews.

the Guardian- July 2011

Extract:

<<New Zealand's Island ruled by artists  - Stephen Phelan

My first impressions of Waiheke Island are coloured by the sight of bare bottoms, all brightly painted in tinges of lime green, lemon yellow, electric blue and blushing pink. Sailing in from Auckland on the hourly Fullers ferry, we pass underneath a whole hillside of these cheeky sentinels, life-sized human figures standing stock-still and buck naked on the headland above Matiatia Bay. They were carved from wood and screen-printed to look three-dimensional by a sculptor named Christian Nicolson.....

.....There is talk of making it a permanent fixture, a way of saying "Welcome to Waiheke" that encapsulates the spirit of the place. Which is not to say the place is a nudist colony (though two of its 100 white sand beaches do operate a "clothing-optional" policy). It is merely to suggest that this island is ruled by artists and artisans....

....This year's first prize goes to Denis O'Connor, who has lived on Waiheke for more than 40 years, and is sometimes given the credit for establishing it as a bohemian enclave.

.... Local art is now a viable industry, and hundreds of islanders make a living in it. The thoroughfare of Oneroa village is lined with shops and galleries full of their work. "For many years, Waiheke was a refuge," says Olivier Duhamel, who sculpts in bronze at a gallery called Bodyscape (+64 9 372 7220, bodyscape.net.nz). "But recently it's been growing into an art destination. People are coming over specifically to buy here." .....

...Around the corner at the Toi Gallery (+64 9 372 2962, sallysmith.co.nz), which showcases the work of Sally Smith, among others, I am told that an artist named Chris Bailey is so in demand that they can barely keep his pieces on display. .....

......Gene O'Neill and Liz Eglinton were living what they call "corporate lives" in Auckland until 10 years ago, when they quit their jobs and built a guesthouse on 16 acres of island hillside, facing west toward the city and the sunset....

.....But for the first time during my stay, it begins to rain, and the low clouds pour down over Church Bay, obscuring Auckland in the distance. "Great," says my waitress, and she's not being sarcastic – residents depend on these showers to fill their water tanks. "That's how you tell a weekender from an islander," she says. "The tourists hate the rain, but we bloody love it." >>>>>>>>>>>

Ponsonby News - June 2011

Olivier Duhamel - Artist of the month  - May 2010 - NZ Art Guild

5th  International Conference ArtCast 2010 -

Casting, from Rigor of Technique to Art University Dunarea de Jos of Galati, Faculty of Metallurgy and Materials Science Galati, Romania, 14-15 May 2010

Denyo ALIPIEV from the Technical University of Sofia and Director of Castingarea present his paper at the conference:- ART CASTING: FOUNDRIES IN INTERNET AND SOME APPLICATIONS

Waiheke Weekender - September 2009

French-born Waiheke artist Olivier Duhamel creates beauty out of bronze. His figurines, mostly of the female nude, sell on the international art circuit in galleries from China to Belgium. He talks to Sean Gillespie about art, inspiration and his journey from corporate executive to Island sculptor.

Waiheke Sculptor Olivier Duhamel discusses being inspired by female nudity and turning it into a lucrative, yet classy, art form. Gulf News Reporter Sean Gillespie gets to the bottom of the bare facts.

He’s been shot at during a New Caledonian uprising; traversed Africa to seel second-hand Peugeots on the Nigerian black market and had a prosperous computer engineering career. But on Waiheke, he’s best known for his art. Naked art. Oneroa Sculptor Olivier Duhamel has spend the past few years refining the craft of sculpting bronze figurines and now has a network of galleries selling them from Paris to Shanghai. Based in his Church Bay road studio, the French-born artist crafts a mix of portraits, body casts and bronze sculptures. Although the body casting brings in more regular clientele, Olivier’s passion is for tastefully done, nude female figurines that sett for up to $1200 apiece in European galleries.

The 52 year old started in the art world with his pencil drawings but had little success with galleries accepting his portraits. However, when he started crafting the bronze figurines, doors opened. “On the Island there must be 50 people doing paintings. There are only a few bronze sculptors. Because of the difficulty and cost, there are not many people doing it. I immediately found galleries willing to try my stuff.” Crafting graceful bronze figurines for the international art circuit is a delicate art form. It requires precision to both replicate the finer detail of human anatomy and to ensure harmonious lines from every angle. “I’m trying to be realistic in my style and anatomically correct, so I need live models to check how the skin actually folds at the back, but generally I model from memory” says Olivier. Female nudes became Olivier’s inspiration when he was a teenager in France. “Going back to my very early drawings there were already a lot of female nudes.” Olivier casts figurines in limited editions of eight to twelve, selling each piece for $400-$1200.

Each piece in an edition is unique because a different patina is applied. The patina process – which speeds up oxidisation, creates an antique effect, with the metal’s surface acquiring different colours and highlights depending on the method used. Originally, Olivier performed each step of the figurines creation from moulding the sculpture in wax or clay to applying the patina. But now several galleries are selling the figurines, he has a foundry perform the middle step – casting the bronze into the moulds. “And that frees up time to do other things,” he says. Fortunately, another Waiheke bronze sculptor, Oliver Stretton-Pow, owns the Art Foundry, giving Olivier a place to have his casting done professionally on the Island. Parallels between Oliver and Olivier don’t stop at their shared art and similar names – the sculptors have parents living within 20 kilometres of each other in southern France.

Olivier was born in Roubaix, a northern French city over the Belgium border. His father was an officer in the merchant navy and so the family moved a lot, with Olivier attending four private catholic high schools. After he left school, he embarked on a less trodden path. It started with driving an old Peugeot 404 across Africa to Nigeria and selling it at premium, he reminisces “At the time, Peugeot was such a strong brand in Africa people were prepared to pay the same amount for a 10-year-old Peugeot as they would for a brand new Toyota.” The entrepreneur recognised an opportunity and in the following five years, he regularly made the adventurous and lucrative trip. “we would drive them from Paris to central and western Africa and sell them for 10 times the money. After a while I was paying people to drive my cars. That was far more exciting than being at uni or in an office job.”

Years later, Olivier met his Bordeaux born wife Marie-France in Paris. The couple soon embarked on a journey to the southern hemisphere, and found themselves in the middle of the 1984 civil uprising in New Caledonia. “Being white, you were immediately perceived as a colonialist. I got shot at.” Regardless of the tensions the couple enjoyed their time in French Polynesia.

A few years later, they ended up in New Zealand with the intention of moving on to Australia. But that’s not how things worked out. With Olivier’s successful career in IT, the couple found comfort in Auckland. Olivier started out with French company Sofrana Shipping and eventually moved on to work for IBM. “I became a computer engineer by accident. And the money was very good in the mid 1980s. I would make in a month what most people make in a year,” he says. “It was hard to resist, even though the lifestyle was not great, the money was fantastic.” However, Olivier’s IT career came to an end in 2003 when he lost his job working for software giant Symantec during a company restructure. The couple took the opportunity to move with their three children to Waiheke. Since 1987, the family had spent much of their spare time on Waiheke eventually buying a holiday home. As time went on, weekends on the Island got longer and longer. “The weekends started stretching to Monday, starting on Thursday, and then starting on Wednesday, stretching to Tuesday. After a while we were spending more time here than in Auckland so we decided to move,” Olivier explains. They had wanted to make the move for a long time but were put off by the idea of commuting.

Losing his job gave Olivier and Marie-France the opportunity they needed. Making the transition from fulltime suit to fulltime artist wasn’t an easy decision fro Olivier. “My wife encouraged me. I’ve always been a bit creative. She did not like the stressed corporate man. She said ‘Do something you really like and you’ll be a better man’ so I followed her advice.” Olivier says it was a bit of a gamble changing careers in his forties but, six years later, the couple have no regrets. Olivier has galleries selling his work in New Zealand, Australia, France, Belgium and China and Marie is studying toward a master in linguistics at Auckland University. Because demand for his bronze figurines fluctuates, Olivier has also mastered body casting which brings in a more regular income. Trading under the name Bodyscape, Olivier Moulds parts of people’s bodies – or sometimes the whole body – and creates a plaster model of it. The concept has been popular with people wanting moulds of their faces, pregnant bellies, hands and feet. However, the most popular body aprt Olivier has had to mould are breasts with about 30 orders in the last year. But it’s more of a summer thing, he says. “People don’t really feel like getting naked in winter, but as soon as the sun’s back…”

Olivier’s BodyScape Sculpture Studio and workshop is at 49 Church bay road. For more information, visit his website at www.duhamel.bz and on www.bodyscape.net.nz

Words and photos: Sean Gillespie, Waiheke Gulf News

 

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Gulf News - January 2008
Lyndal Jefferies

Bronze sculptors Olivier Duhamel and Jill Varani are holding an open studio in Oneroa next week end to give locals the opportunity to discover their work and visit the workshop. Visitors will be able to learn about the lost wax and ceramic shell techniques for making small bronze sculptures, as well as being able to view and purchase some of their most recent works.

Bronze casting is a 3000 year old technique. For both Duhamel and Varani this Open Day marks the end of their initial apprenticeship, during which they have acquired the basics skills that will allow them to express themselves more freely in the future. Essentially, they have discovered that they need to become experts in all aspects of their trade: modelling, wax working, mould making, foundry, chemistry, welding.

They say they have learned that with another 20 to 30 years of persistent hard work they may eventually become masters of their craft and one day, perhaps, deerve the title of "artist:.

Duhamel and Varani have been working together since May last year. During this time they have been exploring the lost wax and ceramic shell techniques to make a number of small figurative bronze sculptures. They share a common interest in figurative art and their inspiration comes largely from the female nude.

They are both regular members of the Catherine Mitchell Life Drawing Group in Ostend. Olivier's bronze works are now sold in galleries across the country as well as in Sydney, Melbourne and Paris, while Jill is promoting her ccreations in her native Colorado. The pair work out of a garage in Oneroa where Olivier has established a small home foundry. Duhamel and Varani will be demonstrating and explaining the entire process of making a bronze sculpture, from modelling in clay, wax or plasticine, making a wax duplicate, building a ceramic mould, melting and pouring the metal, cleaning the "raw" cast ti finally applying a patina to the finished sculpture.

Their studio will be open on Saturday 9 February from 11am to 5pm at 49 Church bay raod. Oneroa, Phone 372 7220

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Waiheke Market Place - 31 May 2006
Whitney Barton

Olivier Duhamel's nudes take a life of their own. Light falls softly on the skin contours, transforming the body into a sculptural work. Rendered in balck and white, form takes precedence. Olivier prefers black and white images because he is colour blind, and because he likes the dramatic rendition of these images. According to Olivier, "I do not see why black and white images cannot convey the same beauty and harmony that colour paintings can, specifically with figurative images."

In one drawing, a woman enters the ocean facing the sea, seemingly unaware of the viewer. Her arms gracefully outstretched, seem to hold up the cloud filled sky. beyond the coastline seems to float on the water. There is a surreal, idyllic quality to this work, which seems to take place in some forgotten paradise. In another, a naked woman strares unabashedly at the viewer as she dresses. Viewers become voyeur. After all, in these drawings, the female body becomes something to be celebrated rather than hidden away by layers of clothing.

With painstaking attention to detail ansd shading, Olivier works with a magnifying glass, and is able to capture each strand of hair on his model's heads. Originally from Paris, Olivier began his artistic career with etching on copper plate, training in Dieppe, Normandy, with well known artist Crystel Legardinier. He arrived in New Zealand in 1987 with his wife and three children. he began drawing 3 years ago (2003) and since then has produced hundreds of finely detailed portraits, nudes and sketches. He has been a member of the Catherine Mitchell Life drawing group since 2004.

Continuing with his love of the human form, Olivier has recently branched out into bronze nudes, which were most recently on display at the Waiheke Community Art Gallery Small Things Exhibition this past April.

If you would like to model for Olivier, Please contact him at 372 7220

Whitney Barton