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| This courier article is no longer available. |
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| A tapestry of oppurtunity |
The invitation to contribute to the King's Courier on the subject of the arts suggested to me an opportunity to address some misconceptions and to provide some advocacy for a Visual/Fine Arts education.
As an artist I make and exhibit paintings and drawings, and I'm also senior lecturer in the School of Art & Design at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). I found my way into the world of art by a circuitous path, a path so ill-formed for King's students of my generation that it was rarely countenanced. Peter Featherstone (Peart 65-68) is the only contemporary of mine whom I know to have also found his way into art. Later, Paul Barton (Peart 71-74) and Brett Graham (Major 80-83) bushcrashed their respective ways to Elam.
I am pleased to say that the path is now well trodden by King's students who have prospered at art school, graduated, and gone on to become active cultural protagonists. In our programme alone, recent graduates with Bachelor of Visual Arts degrees include Kiri Sutherland (Middlemore 92), Sarah Corban (Middlemore 92-93), Dane Mitchell (Averill 92-94), Hadleigh Averill (Averill 90-94), and Paddy O'Rourke (School 93-95). Scott Everson (Marsden 92-96) and Andrew Barber (Averill 94-96), still studying, are waiting in the wings.
In the 1960s art had a marginal role in the New Zealand secondary school curriculum. Art was not offered at bursary level, and there was no such thing as Art History as a separate discipline. If one had suggested that art studies in the future might encompass cultural theory, many right-thinking New Zealanders would have been inclined to reach for their guns.
The problem for King's seemed to be that art was not sport. Indeed, the art club rather pointedly operated during the same hours as the infamous house run.
It must be conceded that art clubbers were recognised as worthy whenever lettering was needed on presentation footballs, cricket bats or team photos. Curiously, we escaped being called on to arrange flowers for special occasions, this being a role traditionally assigned to certain school librarians.
To be fair, we were no more marginalised than any other of the College's esoteric interest groups, and Geoff Greenbank regularly took the trouble to drop in on art club afternoons and give support. I am personally indebted to the then Art Master Max Jackson, not only for the encouragement provided by his art club, but also for his generosity in organising an extra-curricular series of lectures on Art History for our small group of seventh form enthusiasts.
At the time I was a pupil, the sole artist role model King's had to offer was Don Binney (Peart 53-57), and the school was clearly ambivalent about his role as a model. Don's particular subversion seemed to have been that he insisted on being allowed to study Art in the sixth form. The shear daring and affrontery of this had acquired almost mythic status and was related with both grudging admiration and lingering pique. His magnificent painting of The Gap at Piha (a classic New Zealand work of its period donated to the College by his contemporaries) hung in a prominent position outside the staffroom. It became for me an inspirational symbol both of vitality in contemporary New Zealand art and of promise for a possible future as an artist.
I left College, however, without the confidence to follow my passion, although I did follow my other personal interest in the world of science. It took a further six years before I developed the courage to apply for entry to art school. My years at Elam (University of Auckland), the only art school in Auckland at that time, proved to be hugely enjoyable and profitable for me. Don Binney was a senior lecturer in the painting section and one of those rare characters whom any student is lucky to come across during their time at university. Subsequently I also taught as a relieving lecturer in painting at Elam, while Brett Graham was to become (and is currently) a lecturer at Te Toi Hou, Elam. |
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