About this Artwork

Joe Sheehan has been working with stone since his early teens, most recently with Lost and Found, presented as eight colossal stone carvings on Auckland’s Federal Street. With Bulb, Sheehan has achieved the seemingly impossible by hand carving a working light bulb from a block of pounamu (Ngai Tahu Stone Reference: S10092VT). In its inactive state, the lightbulb looks to be a solid sculpture, but when switched on the pounamu is illuminated with inner light revealing the extraordinary properties of the stone.

“I loved the notion of a light being switched on and off as a representation of a ‘quiet revelation’, quotidian and so familiar as to be almost invisible. For some reason I like this space in my work, a twist, often using an unusual material to reveal something we have become almost blind to.”

To achieve this effect, the pounamu bulb has a cluster of LEDs mounted inside it. The form is carved using a technique borrowed from ancient Chinese Jade vessel-making traditions where the hollow is slowly carved out using a sphere burr.

“The opportunity to make a digital edition of Bulb means that more people will get to experience it. The screen is a field of light, so it seemed appropriate for this work. I like the word ‘bulb’ as a nod to the earthy and organic… the object looks like it could have been pulled out of the ground as much as it is a direct reference to the thing that hangs in our homes.”

At the heart of the concept was the desire to give pounamu its own source of light to showcase its beautiful translucent qualities.

“When working with Pounamu, one is also working with light. This material is unlocked by light, so I was interested in this relationship with a material that is so hard and tough and something completely intangible. I was also captivated by the idea that all artists who work with this material over time have been holding it to the light and peering inside, into another space, one that often reflects the exterior world to a remarkable degree.”

Given pounamu’s significance to Māori and that of jade in Eastern cultures, Sheehan is particularly mindful of the spiritual and cultural dimension of the material.

Available for 48 hours only, successful purchasers of Bulb will receive both digital video and still image versions of the artwork, as well as the gift of a physical photographic edition.