Juliette Milne is a very accomplished sculptor – there are the essences of beauty and absolutes of accuracy in her works. Every detail is right. The works have character, disposition, dignity; they tell a tale of the season passing, the seed pods are opening up, something is about to happen, and to end. They have presence. This is flax.

Milne’s assurance and command of bronze is fundamentally obvious but what is unusual is that these works readily elicit a group of expressive adjectives more commonly used to describe the qualities of drawing and the powers of understatement: deft, restrained, composed, serene, quiet, beautiful, affirming, apropos, etcetera.

The works achieve botanic faithfulness and lock the viewer by dint of memory and evocation into the dialogues so particular to flax with its historic, industrial and cultural usage in New Zealand.