In 2002, John Lyall exhibited his suite of drawings entitled "A Moa, A Math, A Mount". The title of the exhibition referred to a series of words, a sequence, also a pun for those trained in Latin to solve.
MOA - Lyall has had a long interest in adoption and adaptation. He himself is an expatriate. An Australian now living and working in New Zealand. He says, "here in the Southern Hemisphere we have great flightless birds: - Moas, Emus, Ostriches. Some extinct, others not. In the act of coming to NZ I came to a place where some birds walk and the only endemic land mammals fly. I came by jumbo! The lost Moa is a lost voice., that through our acceptance of loss we sometimes make the lost iconic. The Moa has become an icon, the extinct fauna as a valorised gap".
MATHS - Nigel Clark wrote, "John Lyall's three-dimensional renditions of mathematical equations explore (the) interface between the scientific and aesthetic realms. The equation, which conventionally inhabits an imaginary two-dimensional space - the epitome of scientific abstraction - has been given substance, and in the process has been drawn into the space once reserved for aesthetic expression."
Lyall notes, "lots of people think Maths is difficult and ugly and that we widely misuse it. I am talking about a history of an engagement with mathematical curves & beauty. The circle is the dominant curve, the default curve, a dumb curve. This body of work deals with some really elegant curves." Lyall himself has constructed equations in picket fencing and demolition wood.
MOUNT - "Mountains" - John says, "read the book!" The coffee table rendition of our beautiful country. "A country which constructs its corporate marketing as "100% pure NZ" (yes it is a set of postage stamps as well), and we have that legend Sir Edmund Hillary. So it is construction - this is to appeal to adventure tourists & eco-tourists. Constructing National Identity for the external consumer rather than the citizen."
To understand his work is perhaps as curator Allan Smith has written, "The understanding of the shifting antipodean position is implicit in (Lyall's) work "
A strong body of work, a selection of which was acquired by Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington for their collection.
