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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
ned 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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