Re-orient

Re-orient fell in Ray Haydon’s seventieth year and his fifteenth with Sanderson. A showcase of his craftsmanship, it brought the strands of his sculpture together: wall works, indoor and outdoor pieces, and the kinetic works. It also gave its name to a book, with an essay by Laura Howard written from the workshop that year.

The title work, Re-orient (2020), took the polished stainless steel of the Reflector series outdoors at a much larger scale — a marine-grade steel line that soars, curves in around itself, then rises sharply to stand against the skyline. It was made to stand where a cherished kauri died in the North Island summer drought of 2019–20. Its mirror finish — “acres of welding” so that no join seam shows, then polishing — is a departure from Ray’s usual matte surfaces: the work reflects and distorts whatever stands around it.

The lockdown of that year proved productive. Orbital (2020), a new corten sculpture, emerged from it with a rich orange patina awaiting its slow weathering to rusty brown — and at the workshop door sat the wings of the Oscillate series, outdoor carbon fibre kinetics that veer up sharply then split, each wing curved and then twisted to “get more windage,” as Ray puts it.

Drawn from Laura Howard’s essay in the book Re-orient: Recent Sculpture by Ray Haydon (Sanderson, 2020).