Tusalava

Len Lye
New Zealand
1901 – 1980

Tusalava
1929
single channel digital video, silent 10 min
Currently on display, Gallery 5
Place made
London
Medium
single channel digital video, silent 10 min
Credit line
Public Engagement Fund 2018
Accession number
20186MV9
Signature and date
Not signed. Not dated.
Provenance
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision on behalf of The Len Lye Foundation.
Media category
Moving Image
Collection area
Other international art
Copyright
© The Len Lye Foundation

  • New Zealand-born Len Lye, a pioneering experimental filmmaker, was inspired from a young age by early twentieth-century film, building an international reputation as an innovative and avant-garde practitioner. Despite spending much of his career in London and later New York, Lye was significantly influenced by the diversity and dynamism of Australian Aboriginal, Māori and Samoan cultures, having experienced these during earlier travels around Australia and New Zealand.

     

    First screened by the London Film Society in 1929, Tusalava is Lye’s first completed film and was created using stop-frame animation, whereby Lye made 4400 drawings, which he then photographed. 

    A Samoan word, tusalava suggests the circle of life and references the basic theory of evolution, from single cells to more complex organisms. As the cycle continues, the emerging organisms continually change, becoming more sophisticated over time. With the ongoing changes and with species beginning to diverge, conflict and division starts to appear between the communities. The film was accompanied by a piano score, composed by Jack Ellitt, which sadly has been lost.

     

    Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre-1980

  • [Book] AGSA 500.