Glow. From the series: House Alterations

Neil Dawson’s ‘House Alterations’

If there’s one thing all New Zealanders can relate to, it’s the ‘little wooden house’. That was Neil Dawson’s thinking when he made these art works in 1978. Disenchanted with what he called ‘self-indulgent’ sculpture, Dawson created these toy-like objects to reach a broad audience.

There is something familiar about these scenes: light spilling from a doorway, a pair of identical houses, a stairway to a secret tower. Dawson made them on a small scale so they’d be portable – but also because he had to. He didn’t have a studio at the time, so his sculptures needed to be small enough to build on his desk at home.