Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have come the way of otn via its readers: rhana devenport the new director of the auckland art gallery was in new plymouth last week as a member of the panel selecting the new director of the govett-brewster  • applications from just about every curator you have heard of (and one who isn’t) have all passed to the next stage in the who-will-go-to-venice race run by creative nz • if you are anywhere near the hamburger bahnhof in berlin eight euro will get you in to see simon denny’s entry into the national gallery prize to be awarded 19 september • two and a half years after the departure of heather galbraith te papa has still not advertised for a senior art curator • when auckland university was out chasing up students to bulk up numbers at its  elam art school last week, it entertained the shanghai university delegation at dealer gallery starkwhite • francis upritchard has a work featured in the first exhibition held on new york’s high line • the auckland city council has launched a survey and the line of questioning suggests that a city artist in residence is in the wind • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud will be suitably rewarded.

Old school

There are now so many art schools in New Zealand that to list them would risk readers dropping off but, back in the day, there were really just two, one in the North called Elam and one in the South, Ilam. The huge expansion of art school choices, the drift north and the earthquake haven't been kind on the Southern school whose last hurrah was probably incubating Cotton, Robinson, Pick and Co, 25 years ago.

Of course there have been others since (Francis Upritchard is one and Dan Arps another, albeit via Elam) but Ilam, like most of the schools south of Auckland, has struggled to keep attached to its alumni in the way, say, Elam does. Every new graduate of Ilam faces a choice: move to Auckland or struggle to have your reputation creep any further north than Wellington and even that only on a good day.

So you'd think, wouldn’t you, that the University of Canterbury might put some effort into differentiating NZ’s oldest art school and make it a destination for anyone seriously wanting to be a practising artist. Well not so much. The Vice chancellor apparently once told art school staff that the place would be more financially effective as a car park, which doesn’t really have the can-do spirit. And when energy is applied to the art school by the university it most often seems to be in the form of a review.

So some input for free based on conversations with readers over the last few moths. How about getting some variety in the school’s staff (over 80 percent male and by the look of their photographs 100 percent white), taking on some of the art interests that haven’t been cherry picked by other schools (performance come to mind). And, at the very least, showing some of the successes of students from the last 10 to 15 years on the website and on Wikipedia where the youngest artist listed will be 50 next year.

COMMENT FROM ROBIN NEATE 24 AUG: While correct in your observations of the University’s attitude (and that of powers beyond) towards Ilam art school (or any art school) unfortunately any input “based on conversations” is dubious.

If variety of school staff is an issue then applicants that would provide that variety would need to apply for the positions when advertised. In the case of my particular appointment I was put in a position of applying for my job twice. Three years apart and in completely new rounds and each time there were between 40 and 50 applicants, a total of around 90 applications overall. No applicants with relevant qualifications were non-white or female. Rest assured if any of them had even a hint of that variety in the current p. c. environment they would surely have gained the position above me (someone truly at the bottom of the heap) ­- an old white middle class Christchurch based male. Also one should be aware that photography can be a deceptive art form and that what may appear 100% white may not be so in reality – Roger Boyce, Senior Lecturer in Painting, is in fact of Native American descent.

As far as taking on “some of the art interests that haven’t been cherry picked by other schools, Ilam currently takes on art interests that other art schools ignore or dismiss as passé e.g. painting, documentary photography, narrative cinema, sculpture. If you think this is unhip then perhaps the following by Anna Lovatt on Rosalind Krauss may be of interest  –

“ In recent years, Krauss has sought to retrieve some of the modernist concepts jettisoned in The Originality of the Avant Garde, particularly the idea of medium-specificity. Observing the current ubiquity of installation art and the unashamedly affirmative relationship much of this work has with the art institution, she argued that what was once a critical dismemberment of the modernist medium has become an ‘official position’.”

An art school isn’t just about producing artists as not every graduate can or will be a successful or well-known artist. I wonder how successful a performance graduate would be? Not really the kind of art-making that would support any kind of career (well, maybe as a busker) let alone support a dealer supporting a performance artist. Even object-art is difficult for dealers to move these days. After all, at the end of the art-day you still have to eat.

With regard to often touted Robinson/Cotton/Pick era (all taught by white males) this was a particularly unique and singular moment. A group of artists inspired by the Reagan era 80s art boom (albeit a few years behind locally), the opening up of this country via Lange and Rogernomics and the accompanying (initial) optimism, the rise of dealer galleries, (ironically) the waning of parochialism and the acceptance that young artists (and curators) can be good and don’t have to be over thirty and last certainly not least a Maori Renaissance that needed young contemporary Maori artists (and their friends that came along for the ride).

Show and tell

Artists are heading to Wellington as the City Gallery installs its latest Prospect exhibition. This time the curator is Kate Montgomery who has a solid track record in both curating and organizing exhibitions. A real shame the City Gallery has lost her to Creative NZ (good news for them though) after such a short run. 

It’s not often that we get a serious curated group show in Wellington and the list of artists is impressive: Eve Armstrong, Ruth Buchanan, Fiona Connor, Simon Denny, Selina Foote, Jacqueline Fraser, Robert Hood, Fiona Jack, Patrick Lundberg/Roman Mitch, Dane Mitchell, Kate Newby, Ava Seymour, Sriwhana Spong, Peter Trevelyan and John Ward Knox. It's hard to believe that only three of them have dealer representation in Wellington, although that in itself probably influenced Montgomery. One thing this selection does do however is put up a big challenge to most of our university art schools and to how well they are doing. 

First up, a big round of applause for the Elam School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland) that will dominate Prospect. Twelve Eleven out of the 15 artists in the show are graduates. Trouble is that doesn't leave a lot of kudos for any of the others. Ilam has just two artists included and even to get there you have to let them share Peter Trevelyan with Massey. AUT also has two (Mitchell and Jack) and Massey only the one. For the other seven art schools in NZ it’s a no show. 

Sure Prospect is only one exhibition but given Montgomery’s reputation and the stated aim of the exhibition being to find “artists producing some of the most thought provoking and confident work today” it's a big red flag for a lot of our art educators. No doubt it will be brushed off as one person’s opinion but the fact is that this exhibition comes at the very time potential students and their parents are weighing up which institution to sign up to and, even more meaningfully, pay for. Their future prospects in fact.

Image: Gold in a pan

COMMENT: Melissa wrote: "Hi, I thought I'd just point out that Fiona Jack and Dane Mitchell are AUT grads - still nominal, but bringing the total for AUT up a little"

By the numbers

0          The percentage of women awarded the $50,000 value Arts Foundation Laureates in the last round

2.37     The percentage increase in annual funding allocated by CNZ in the 2009/10 financial year

3          The number of pianos in Michael Parekowhai’s Venice Biennale installation

2.3      The inflation rate for the year ended 2009

17        The number of days the 1972 Colin McCahon: a survey exhibition was on show in Wellington

12       The number of staff who report to the Senior Curator Art at Te Papa

6.6     The percentage of the $16.7 million dollars recurrent funding distributed by CNZ allocated  to the visual arts in the 2011 round.

15       The number of women among the 54 artists awarded Arts Foundation Laureates to date

24      The number of teaching staff at the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts

86      The number of days Crown Lynn: crockery of distinction is on show at the City Gallery

351    The number of artworks gifted by Max Gimblett to public art museums in Brisbane, Auckland and Christchurch

Good luck

For the next year the Head of School at Elam (the University of Auckland’s Art School) will be Nuala Gregory. According to the University web site Nuala is interested in “the conjunction medium-technology-painting, (non-)representation in art, and the scholarship of creative practice in higher degree research.” Her own art works are “presentations of inchoate form in high-keyed colour; they are intended to invite visual attention from the viewer rather than reduce to represented meaning. As such, they may be seen as exercises in fidelity to the opticality of visual art, or equally as a theoretical-practical enquiry into the condition of painting practice in the age of 'post-medium' and even 'post-conceptual' art.”

Opportunity knocks

As you can see from our side bar WAITING FOR GODOT, we are trying to find out how many artists-with-PhDs the Elam School of Fine Arts intends to produce each year. You might remember that the University of Auckland's goal is 500. So far we haven't been able to find out Elam's share, but fortunately we saw an ad for a National Institute of Creative Industries Post Graduate Study Information Evening to be held in Wellington on Tuesday the 14th. Of course we've signed up. With luck, we'll have the answer for you on Wednesday.
Image: the picture used to promote the Information Evening

Whew!

What a relief. You'll all be relieved to hear that the 500 PhDs per year are for all faculties at Auckland University, and not just the arts sector. We've asked Robyn Hill, Faculty Manager of the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, how many of those will be PhDs-who-make-art. We'll keep you posted.

The 500

The Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland has decided to go for gold in the Art School Graduating-The-Most-PhDs awards. We have already noted its passion for a practice called ‘research,’ and we can now point you to section 4 of the 2007 Annual Plan which quantifies that research in terms of bodies delivered.

The National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries (that’s the School of Architecture and Planning, Dance Studies, Elam, School of Music and the Manukau School) aims to “achieve 800 masters and 500 doctoral completions per annum through the development of an international quality graduate programme.” No, amazingly, this is not a typo: 500 doctorates a year.

A couple of comments:

• For the whole of NZ, the most recent figures we could find stated that 2,574 research degrees were completed in 2005. About 25 percent of them were doctorates.
• The Institute failed to meet its current postgraduates targets in Architecture and Fine Arts in 2006; the pressure is on.
• The Institute seems to believe it can reach its extraordinary goal by minor tweaks. It’s talking about improvements to its web site, recruitment events and communications, a couple of new areas of study and better supervision.

Let’s estimate what the Institute’s 500 PhDs a year could mean for Elam. Given that dance comes late to the PhD fever, it seems to us that as its contribution, the Elam School of Fine Arts must be looking to deliver at least 150 PhDs a year! People with maths skills will know that means in 10 years there could be another 1,500 Fine Arts PhDs loose in the country.
CORRECTION: What a relief. You'll be relieved to hear that the Auckland University has informed us that the 500 PhDs per year are for all faculties and not just the arts sector.

In the hood

The University of Auckland’s National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries (NICAI), which includes the Elam School of Fine Arts, invited Stephen Farthing RA to be Hood Fellow for 2007.

Mr Farthing was born in 1950 and was elected RA in 1998 while he was Ruskin Master of Drawing at Oxford. After an extensive teaching career in the UK, Mr Farthing moved to New York in 2000 to become Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art where “The study of the human body and its conceptual and metaphorical aspects are central to the Academy's intensive curriculum.” His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, in a unique gesture, conferred his Patronage on the New York Academy of Art. Mr Farthing now holds the Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Drawing at the University of the Arts London.

Among Mr Farthing’s commissions are: 2004 Cleveland Browns NFL Town Mural for the stadium in Cleveland, Ohio; 1999 Portrait of the historians Eric Hobsbawm, Rodney Hilton, Sir Keith Thomas, Sir John Elliot, Lawrence Stone and Jean Thirsk; 1998 Topographical painting of Dorset for the Dorchester Hospital Trust; 1997 Printed digital scan of oil painting for the façade of the British Embassy in Paris; Carpet design commissioned by the Grosvenor Estate; 1993 Painting of the buildings of the Oxford University Press.

Mr Farthing’s lecture delivered last week on 8 May was titled The bigger picture of drawing. It is the same title as his inaugural lecture in 2005 at the University of the Arts in London. Mr Farthing is keen "to explore why drawing has been dropped as one of the basic elements of communication – and how to get it back into the fundamental curriculum."

The Hood Fellows are awarded to “distinguished academics with outstanding international reputations who are leading their fields in their research work.”
Image: Stephen Farthing's London studio