Peter Nicholls (artist)

Peter Nicholls (b. 1936) is one of New Zealand’s leading sculptors of public art.

Nicholls was born in Whanganui, New Zealand in 1936. He was educated at the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, the Auckland Teachers' College, and the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts. In 1978 Nicholls spent a year as a graduate assistant at the University of Wisconsin and represented New Zealand at a Sculpture Symposium held in tandem with the Edmonton 1978 Commonwealth Games. His sculptural practice includes numerous large-scale sculptural works held in private and public collections internationally.

In a recent interview, Nicholls explained his philosophy of art: "My work has always concerned the land. Travel and teaching has been an important part of this. The time and materials, and our use of all such resources, are a constant in my work. I never cut living trees on principle, being committed to creating ‘new life’ from discards. Thus, in the materials and the forms, there is the dialectic of the ephemeral and the permanent, life and its short space within time."

Nicholls now lives and works in Dunedin, New Zealand. His major works include Bridge (1986, University of Otago), Spine (1986, Auckland Domain, near the Auckland War Memorial Museum), Rakaia (1996-97, Gibbs Farm), Tomo (2005, Connells Bay Sculpture Park), and Junction (2009, New Lynn). The Dunedin Public Art Gallery presented Journeywork, a major retrospective of his work in 2008.