Richard Wolfe & Stephen Robinson
Penguin Books - $72
This atttractive new publication was launched in Auckland in style last evening at art auction house Art & Object. After Art & Object's Hamish Coney and Penguin Book's Geoff Walker had welcomed everyone Richard Wolfe then addressed the large gathering:
Tonight is an opportunity to thank all those who made this project possible. First of all, my thanks go to photographer Stephen Robinson, who took the idea of doing a book on New Zealand artists in their studios to Penguin. I believe the best ideas are often the simplest ones, and this was one of those. It was also long overdue, so thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Penguin, for taking it on and also for approaching me to do the writing. Once accepted, it was decided that the book would showcase 24 painters and sculptors from around the country. So with that in mind, Stephen and I set off.
Moving ahead somewhat, our completed words and pictures were handed over to Jeremy Sherlock at Penguin who project-managed the process. Thanks to designer Fiona Lascelles who made such a good-looking book out of it all, and also to Sjoerd Langeveld for his technical input, and to Angela Radford and Sandra Lees who worked on the promotion and publicity side. Thanks also to Hamish Coney, who has been an enthusiast for this project from the outset, and for making the Art + Object premises available for tonight’s function. We are also grateful to Kim Crawford for generously providing the refreshments.
I would also like to take this opportunity to personally thank Geoff Walker, soon to retire after a lengthy career at Penguin, and wish him all the best. But turning my own employment prospects, I would be grateful if he ensures that the folk at Penguin have my phone number when he leaves.
Publishers, photographers and publicists are all very well, but the most important people in this project are, of course, the artists, and I’d like to acknowledge them all. We aimed for a geographic spread, and they are spread from the far north to the bottom of the South Island. Starting from the top, there is Chris Booth, at Kerikeri, and Jeff Thomson at Helensville. As you’d expect, Auckland is well represented, and in the Eden Terrace / Mt. Eden / Epsom area we have Stephen Bambury, Stanley Palmer, Richard Killeen, Mary McIntyre, Liz Maw and Andrew McLeod. From the other side of town, Grey Lynn & Ponsonby, we have Jacqueline Fahey, Karl Maughan, Richard McWhannell and John Reynolds, and to the west, Sara Hughes and Tracey Tawhiao. Down on the East Coast, representing Hawke’s Bay, we have Martin Poppelwell and Dick Frizzell, and on the opposite coast, just north of New Plymouth, John McLean. Then, to the south at Whanganui we have Johanna Pegler from Whanganui, Paul Dibble from Palmerston North, and Elizabeth Thomson from Wellington. Crossing Cook Strait we then have Neil Dawson from Christchurch, Heather Straka and Jeffrey Harris from Dunedin, and Nigel Brown from near Riverton in Southland. I thank all these artists for agreeing to part of this project, for their hospitality and, in some cases, for providing overnight accommodation.
We covered a wide range of studios. Indeed, we visited studios in the front rooms of houses, underneath houses and beside houses; from new and customized to older and improvised premises. We visited Johanna Pegler in two studios, at her home in Whanganui and also while she was undertaking a residency at Awhitu, on the South Manukau Head. And to add further to the diversity, two of our artists – Liz Maw and Andrew McLeod – share a studio.
What we had in mind to do was produce a snapshot, a record of artists’ studios at a point in time – which was the latter half of last year, 2009. As you’d expect, things move on, and in a sense we caught things on the cusp. At the time of our visit one of our artists had just moved into a new studio, while another was having one built and has since moved in. A third artist has since moved from the studio in the book to another one round the corner, and I hear another artist is thinking of relocating to another city altogether. Similarly, the work we saw being produced has been completed and moved out of the studio. Johanna Pegler recently exhibited her Awhitu paintings at the Anna Miles Gallery, and the sculpture Paul Dibble was working on at the time of our visit is currently on show at the Gow Langsford Gallery in Lorne Street. Similarly, several of Richard McWhannell’s portraits are now on show at the John Leech Gallery nearby. And when we visited Mary McIntyre she was painting a portrait of art reviewer Terry McNamara. That painting was recently exhibited at Whitespace Gallery and purchased by the Wallace Trust, and is now on show in Auckland newest art gallery, at the magnificent Pah Homestead.
In most cases Stephen and I visited artists together, and then made individual return visits, as required. I recorded discussions with all artists, and these were the basis of the published texts. My aim was to allow the artists to speak for themselves, while Stephen’s fly-on-the-wall photographs give the reader a privileged entry into their personal work-spaces. Thank you once again to the 24 artists who made this possible.
Impressively I thought among the crowd of artists, art dealers and collectors, art commentators and art lovers were 13 of the 24 artists featured in the book:
Jacqueline Fahey
Jeff Thomson
Stephen Bambury
John McLean
Richard McWhannell
Andrew McLeod
Mary McIntyre (pic below)
Tracey Tawhiao
Richard Killeen
Martin Poppelwell
Stanley Palmer
Liz Maw
Karl Maughan (pic below).
Earlier review of title http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/artists-work-new-zealand-painters.html
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