Maori sculptor George Nuku makes art but he will tell you that the art is what made him. “The stone, the wood, carved me,” he says. “It was not me carving them, but the repetition of their carving, that gave me a way of life.”

He talks of stone and wood, but these days he's just as likely to carve polystyrene and Plexiglas. Though clearly done in a Maori style, his art is always evolving—as is the artist. “I am a work in progress,” he says.

George Nuku was born in Hastings, New Zealand, and grew up in Omahu, a small village on the east coast, and later moved with his family to Napier. German and Scottish on his father's side, he comes by his Ngati Kahungunu and Ngati Tuwharetoa tribal affiliation through his mother.

George Nuku attended a school with a shared Maori and English program, and took to drawing at an early age. He had his first art show at fifteen. He attended Massey University, where he studied art, sociology, geography, and Maori studies—and decided his main interest was art, particularly sculpture. He has shown his sculptural work all over the world from the Netherlands to Taiwan or New York. Currently, his work is on display in the Museum de Rouen, rue Beauvoisine.

The exhibition is called: Bottled Ocean

Go and see it very soon, before the end of January. After it will be too late!!

Nathalie Le Gendre