Artist Anish Kapoor was referring to Alan Gibbs’ commission and production process that created the world-famous Gibbs Farm open-air art gallery but he could have been summing up Mr Gibbs’ career when he said: “Alan is not afraid to mess with the landscape. He understands what sculpture does. He knows why it needs to fit in the landscape.”
The 404ha sculpture park is located in Kaipara Harbour, about an hour’s drive from Auckland, which Mr Gibbs bought for a bargain price of $250,000 in 1991. In a way, the park’s ambitious installations reflect the engineer and businessman’s values and efforts.
“The real key to my early years was the realisation that you don’t have to invest money to get control of assets. I’ve tried to do all my business deals without ever investing anything. My principles are simple: Stay completely away from anything to do with government or government incentives, and also try not to invest your own money,” he told a London audience a few years ago.
Growing up in a Presbyterian family, it’s not hard to see why he moved through his early years as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist.
However, his father’s influence as an owner of a string of lingerie stores added the love of business to Mr Gibbs’ early years, which eventually converted him to free market values. So much so that in the 2017 election, he and his ex-wife Dame Jenny Gibbs donated $200,000 to the Act Party.
He studied engineering and economics at the University of Canterbury and Victoria University, before making his first modest fortune in real estate in Sydney in the early 1970s and his first million dollars in 1981, shortly after he turned 40, from corporate takeovers. He then helped broker the privatisation of state-owned companies in New Zealand against significant public opposition.
After his early various business ventures, Mr Gibbs, perhaps still haunted by the spectre of socialism, gave up the commercial world for a while to become a hippie. But the experiment was “so boring” he almost had a mental breakdown. He figured there was “something about this capitalist system after all” and decided to put his engineering knowledge to work.
The result was 11 (so far) amphibious vehicles including the Aquada (sports car), Quadski (quad bike) and Terraquad (a utility 4x4). Some 60% of these vehicles have been developed in New Zealand under his company Gibbs Technologies. Reinforcing Mr Gibbs as a cosmopolitan man, the Aquada carried British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson across the English Channel in four hours in 2004.
The company was the world's first manufacturer to engineer vehicles that can exceed 50km/h on water, as well as achieve normal speeds on land and transition between the two in less than five seconds at the push of a button.