INSIGHTS - NEW ZEALAND ARTISTS TALK ABOUT CREATIVITY
Gareth Shute - Random House NZ$30.00



Gareth Shute is the author of HIP HOP MUSIC IN AOTEAROA, for which he won an award at the 2005 Montana Awards, and MAKING MUSIC IN NEW ZEALAND. He is a musician, plays in two bands and runs an independent recording label. He's also a fiction writer, a freelance journalist and occasionally works as a librarian.

And with his new book he has given us a fascinating look at the creative lives of 110 New Zealand artists of all kinds - composers, musicians of every musical hue, film makers, authors, tattooists, playwrights, actors, photographers, dancers, choreographers, designers,poets, carvers, sculptors.

We have the well-known, the likes of Witi Ihimaera, Ans Westra,Dick Frizzell , Greer Twiss and Douglas Wright and the relatively obscure (to me anyway) like artist Simon Esling, photographer Blink (Ian Jorgensen), cartoonist Chris Stapp and comedian Bret McKenzie (see photo).




But regardless of their fame or otherwise Shute has pulled together an intriguing look at how local artists go about creating their work in the tiny market that is New Zealand/Aotearoa.
As he says in his introduction this aspect of the local arts culture is nicely summarised by Witi Ihimaera:

I actually think that New Zealand is fortunate to have artists, writers, musicians and film-makers of such a high calibre, because most of our work is created on the smell of an oily rag, while working other jobs....to cite an example, it took 10 years for my friend John Barnett to raise the money to make Whale Rider; Niki Caro was making commercials at the same time she was making the movie, and its budget was only NZ$10 million. When the movie became successful internationally, all I could think of was how grateful I was that everybody had stuck to the project.

I rank Gareth Shute as an increasingly important social historian. Have a look at this latest work by him and be inspired as I was.