The Friends of Futuna Charitable Trust are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Jim Allen, the artist, sculptor and light modulator of Futuna Chapel.
Jim worked closely with Chapel architect John Scott and together they created, working in a mutually respectful and collaborative partnership, a shared masterwork that is Futuna Chapel.
The building is widely regarded as a work of creative genius, and a source of artistic as well as spiritual inspiration.
Jim designed four crucial parts of the chapel – the chapel’s striking coloured perspex windows, its 14 Stations of the Cross, the wooden crucifix which is mounted above the altar, and the ‘light modulators’ –modernist constructions made of rimu, glass and yellow Perspex – installed above the entranceway to reduce the afternoon sunlight entering the chapel.
Futuna Chapel marked a significant point in Allen’s development – as it did in Scott’s architectural career. The building became, inadvertently, a profound interaction between an architect and a visual artist.
His contribution to the chapel is recognised in the history of New Zealand art as a major contributor to the Chapel.
Key to the identity of the building is its atmosphere of peace, light, reverence and silence. These qualities are central to its potency as a space for spiritual, cultural and human regeneration.
The large triangular perspex windows that create the snail-slow moving washes of colour through and over the Chapel’s interior, and the daylight modulators over the entrance doors, are central to the visual impact of the Chapel interior. 
Jim’s serene hand carved Christ figure, lost for 12 years in the wilderness, is also bathed in this coloured sunlight. According to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki curator Ron Brownson, the Christ figure (1961) is one of the most significant wood carvings produced in Aotearoa during that period. The Christ figure was stolen from the chapel in 1999 or 2000 and was found in 2012, after which it went through conservation and was returned to the chapel, in the presence of Jim and John Scott’s whanau.
The Stations of the Cross are similarly dramatic and innovative, with their angular imagery cut out of plaster of Paris. The recently restored Stations of the Cross form a decorative modernist frieze around the Chapel. The 14 panels reveal, as a visual narrative, the condemnation and crucifixion of Christ and are enhanced with back lighting and red and blue coloured perspex. These panels were designed, sculpted and delivered by Jim Allen.
Futuna Chapel marked a significant point in Allen’s development – as it did in Scott’s architectural career. The building became, inadvertently, a profound interaction between an architect and a visual artist.
Jim Allen with the Christ figure and John Scott’s whanau, at the time of the figure’s return to the chapel in 2012
In the decades that followed his collaboration with Scott, Allen moved further away from traditional approaches and concepts in his art-making. He devoted his energies to performative and non-object art. An influential teacher at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland from 1960 until 1976, he challenged and inspired a new wave of the country’s artists.
Jim has left New Zealand with an enormous legacy which he created over many decades in his quiet and humble way. He will be missed and the Friends of Futuna are honoured to have the privilege to care for the four exemplar works Jim contributed to Futuna Chapel.
The Trust wishes to extend its deepest sympathies to Jim’s wife Pamela and to their family.
These works are able to viewed in Futuna Chapel on the first Sunday of each month 11:00am to 3:00pm
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For more information about Jim’s art work see here.
Here is further information about Jim and his birthday by our Trustee Greg O’Brien.
See also this obituary on the Stuff website.
Watch our sunlight timelapse of the chapel here:
Main image: Image of Jim in the Chapel taken by Mike White North & South. Other images of the Chapel interior by Paul McCredie and Gavin Woodward.