Famous French artist Henry Matisse once said ‘creativity takes courage’. Apparently, it can also involve an electric Jaguar.

LATE night action in an abandoned Auckland carpark involving a well-known speed freak and a powerful yet stealth-minded car – it’s an absolute larrikin scenario, all in the name of art. 

That’s the premise of an exercise involving four-time Bathurst winner Greg Murphy and artist Otis Frizzell, in a tie-in backed by Jaguar, which they involve with professionally.

Frizzell sketched out a 120 metre by 60 metre metre abstract art piece and invited Murphy to race along his sketches in Jaguar’s electric car, the I-Pace, with the experiment captured by long-lens photography to produce an enormous “live” artistic installation. 

Touted as a world-first, and one of the largest and most ambitious creative interpretations of long-exposure photography, the ‘work’ was created in a carpark at Mount Smart Stadium on across June 14-15 and was the result of months of planning, and required an expert health and safety crew to execute, the brand says via its public relations company.

“Out of all of the creative projects I’ve been involved in, this one has to be the most bonkers,” according to Frizzell. 

“It was pretty touch and go as to whether this would even work.  We were attempting something on a massive scale, but thankfully the performance of both Greg and the individual photographers meant the experiment was a success.”

Why an I-Pace? Well, apart from electrics being very in vogue at the moment, it’s the Jaguar least likely to raise a noise complaint. For the record, the brand suggests the car proved best-suited due to it having superior precision and road-handling features, facets required to navigate the tricky sketch. Still, it appears to have been a challenge for the ace, who is about to resurrect his international racing career with a wildcar run a Bathurst in October with Richie Stanaway.

 “I like to think I’m a pretty good driver,” said Murphy. 

“But this still took me hours of driving across two nights to get right.  Otis had a vision of the way the car needed to move, and was shouting in my ear pretty much non-stop about when to turn and when to brake.”

“I was essentially flying blind around a dark carpark in Mount Smart, putting all of my faith into Otis’s vision.  I’m proud of the results, I can’t quite believe we managed to create it.” 

Jaguar New Zealand general manager, Steve Kenchington, commented: “I had a bit of a chuckle when I thought of one of our most prominent artistic families collaborating with our greatest racing legend – but it simply reinforces the fact that art and performance working together delivers stunning results. 

“We’d like to extend our sincere thanks to Greg Murphy and Otis Frizzell for their vision and ambition.”

The final art piece will eventually go through a limited edition production run, with no more than 10 printed originals available to the general public.  Anyone interested in purchasing a piece of the limited-edition art should send an enquiry to the Jaguar Instagram page.