Jeff Thomson is known by many as the artist who created the giant corrugated iron gumboot in Taihape, and Holden station wagon in Te Papa. He holds a bachelor of fine arts from University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts (1981), and was the 1995 Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago, New Zealand’s most prestigious artist residency.

Jeff’s large, immersive sculptures are well regarded. His mesh house that visitors can walk into, as well as his large scale screen printed skeleton leaves, are all derived from experiments with metal. As an artist, he finds joy in creating something new, with experimentation and curiosity abound.

Jeff’s small sculptures are just as awe-inspiring as his public pieces. He has the unique ability to visually soften hard material, delicately arranging it, as seen in his sculpture Floral. The influence of drawing and painting can be seen within these pieces, as Jeff employs colour and composition to each three-dimensional piece as though they could be works on paper.

Many of Jeff’s pieces hold some element of screen printing that offers a level of detail to what he is portraying. Almost all of his work is corrugated in some form, which gives each piece an added sense of movement that echoes nature. While much of his larger scale works are popular, it is his smaller sculptures that retain a highly contemporary sensibility that makes them so collectable.