Ghost Chandelier – Commissioned for The Dowse Art Museum’s 50th Anniversary

Commissioned in 2021 to mark the 50-year milestone of The Dowse Art Museum, Ghost Chandelier is a major work by Wairarapa-based artists Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams—known collectively as Crystal Chain Gang.

Suspended with theatrical elegance, the chandelier features cast glass wings, feathers, and native bird forms, including the huia, miromiro, korimako, and kakariki. These spectral motifs transform the chandelier’s traditional associations with opulence and domestic grandeur into a poignant reflection on fragility, loss, and the beauty of Aotearoa’s natural world.

At once dazzling and critical, Ghost Chandelier invites viewers to consider the cost of consumption and the ecological impact of disappearing habitats—offering a luminous tribute to what we value, and what we risk losing.