Auckland University - Focus On The Arts
11 July 2000
FOCUS ON THE ARTS
The state of the creative and performing arts in New Zealand will be scrutinised at the University of Auckland's annual Winter Lecture series starting on July 18.
The six speakers include the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, in her capacity as Minister for the Arts, Culture and Heritage. At the final lecture on August 22 she will be discussing "The arts and public policy".
The Chief Executive Officer of the New Zealand Film Commission, Ruth Harley, will be talking about "The culture industries".
The other speakers are well-known practitioners in the arts: curator and critic Dr Wystan Curnow, editor and composer William Dart, writer and theatre expert Dr Murray Edmond, and Maori film-maker Lisa Reihana.
The lectures "will help to bring us all up to date" on the arts in New Zealand, says series organiser Dr Roger Horrocks.
"A collective examination of this topic seems particularly important at a time when public attitudes and public policy are changing. The country is rethinking its future directions under the pressure of economic problems and rapid technological advances, and talking about the need for our culture to become more alert and innovative.
"Speakers will be tackling some current controversies in the arts, such as Dr Wystan Curnow who will be looking at the consequences of the populist, market-driven approach to the arts that has dominated the last decade.
"Another lively area of discussion is postcolonialism: how successfully New Zealand has come to terms with its colonial beginnings and what this implies for today's bi-cultural and multi-cultural society."
Issues such as audiences, training, "surviving as an artist", changing cultural dynamics, new media, and "popular" versus "high" culture will also be covered.
The series is extremely topical given the Government's recent injection of extra funding into the arts, says Dr Horrocks, and the public discussion about the "Heart of the Nation" review.
"It is also timely as the University prepares to launch its School of Creative and Performing Arts, based in the former TVNZ studios in Shortland Street. The School represents a big vote of confidence in the future of the arts in New Zealand by the University and by those citizens who have made major donations to the project."
DETAILS OF THE LECTURES ARE ATTACHED.
JOURNALISTS ARE MOST WELCOME TO ATTEND AND REPORT ON LECTURES. NEWSWORTHY TEXTS WILL BE CIRCULATED IN ADVANCE WHEN AVAILABLE.
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT ROGER HORROCKS ON PHONE 378-6218.
Bill Williams
Public
Relations Officer
Phone 373-7599 ext 7698
Fax
373-7047
Email
wrs.williams@auckland.ac.nz
______________________________________________________________________
WINTER
LECTURES 2000
Tuesdays, 1-2pm, Maidment Theatre, 8 Alfred
Street
State of the arts: The creative and performing arts in New Zealand today.
18 July Dr Wystan Curnow,
University of Auckland: High culture now!
The discussion
of the arts in recent years has been so dominated by issues
of audience that the very purpose of the arts seems to have
been distorted and simplified in the process. When many
believe that "growing audience" is their chief purpose, the
fate of the arts becomes indistinguishable from that of
entertainment. In 1973 Dr Curnow published "High culture in
a small province", an essay concerning the culture of
culture in New Zealand. The passage of time has not only
maintained but increased the relevance of some of its ideas
to the state of the arts, and so he was invited to re-visit
it for this series. High culture now! is the
result.
Biographical note
Dr Wystan Curnow has
contributed to and commented on the state of the visual and
the literary arts in this country for more than two decades.
He has curated or co-curated some 20 exhibitions, in New
York, London, Amsterdam, Sydney as well as New Zealand.
Three collections of his poetry have been published.
Prolific as an art critic, he is known particularly for his
writing on CHECK leading New Zealand artists Colin McCahon,
Len Lye, and Billy Apple. In the 1980s he was at the
forefront of new developments, co-editing the literary
magazine Splash which introduced "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry" to
local readers and he was a contributor to the influential
And, the first magazine to apply post-structuralist ideas to
New Zealand writing and culture. He also founded Artspace,
the first and most prominent publicly-funded contemporary
art spaces in the country.
25 July Dr William Dart,
composer, broadcaster and editor: Music in New
Zealand.
New Zealand music has a tremendous potential,
nurtured by the many musicians and composers who have
contributed to this field over the last few decades. As a
country, we have been too slow in acknowledging and
honouring those who have gone before in all of the many
genres of Kiwi music. It says much that major achievements
like Jenny McLeod's Earth and Sky and Patrick Flynn's score
for Don't Let It Get You still languish without a CD
release. It is by coming to terms with this splendid past
that we will be fully prepared to take on the challenge of a
truly Pacific music for the new millennium. This lecture
will be illustrated by a wealth of extracts from interviews
and musical material gathered over the last 20
years.
Biographical note
Over the last two decades,
William Dart has established himself as a leading
commentator on music in this country with his regular
columns in the Listener and various programmes for Concert
FM. These programmes include New Horizons, devoted to rock
and other contemporary music, and New Music Survey which
surveys recent New Zealand composition. In 1988 he founded
Music in New Zealand, which he is still editing, and
currently lectures in music at the University of Waikato. In
1997 he was awarded an MNZM for services to arts and
music.
1 August Dr Murray Edmond (University of
Auckland): The real magic in the magic real: Recent New
Zealand drama.
The growth of a local stage drama will be
discussed in relation to the cultural nationalism of the
last 20 years and the neo-colonialism of the global society.
How far do the anxieties and dreams of colonial society
persist in Aotearoa? This lecture will look at some notable
examples of play-writing in New Zealand in the 1990s in
relation to the international mode of "magic realism" and
will consider the implications for our so-called
post-colonial society. The plays will include
Whatungarognaro, Think of a Garden, Lovelock's Dream Run,
Waiora, and Eugenia.
Biographical note
Murray
Edmond teaches drama and English at the University of
Auckland. He worked extensively through the 1990s as a
dramaturge of new New Zealand plays, including Lovelock's
Dream Run and Krishnan's Dairy for example. In the 1970s he
began professional theatre work with the Living Theatre
Troupe and Theatre Action (New Zealand) and the Half Moon
Theatre (London), and in the 1980s he started a small
touring company, Town and Country Players, performing in
rural areas. His doctoral thesis, "Old comrades of the
future", looked at experimental theatre in New Zealand from
1962 to 1982. Murray Edmond is also one of New Zealand's
best-known poets and has written eight volumes of poetry and
edited three anthologies.
8 August Dr Ruth Harley,
Chief Executive Officer, NZ Film Commission: The culture
industries.
15 August Lisa Reihana, Manukau Institute
of Technology: Skinflicks: Film and urban Maori
arts.
Lisa Reihana's talk will raise a variety of current
issues in the visual arts in Aotearoa/New Zealand, related
to our changing ideas about who we are and how we are coming
to terms with profound social and technological changes. To
mention two of these contemporary issues:
(1) How do
labels operate in the art world? How fluid are categories
such as "film", "visual arts", "Maori art", or "New Zealand
art"? There are obvious advantages to having categories
which provide clear career paths and places to exhibit art —
but those established categories can become an obstacle for
artists today who experiment and operate across boundaries.
This can be a particular problem for a small country — or
are we just not trying hard enough today to think outside
the old frames?
(2) Today there are increasing
opportunities for an artist to think globally, to establish
links with artists in other countries, and to exhibit work
internationally. Art is now a central means of communication
globally. What happens when we take local art — "Maori art"
or "New Zealand art" — to those overseas contexts? And are
our artists helped and encouraged to take as much advantage
of the new global opportunities as artists in other
countries?
Biographical note
Lisa Reihana has been an
important artist and innovator in the field of moving
images. After graduating from Elam she has created
influential films such as Wog Features and contributed some
striking installations to Te Papa. She is a lecturer in the
Moving Image Department of the Manukau School of Visual
Arts, and was recently at the Sydney Biennale to do a series
of performances (with Pacific Sisters) and to install a work
at the
entrance of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Lisa
Reihana has championed new ideas in many areas of the arts
including animation, the digital media, the dialogue between
popular culture and the visual arts, and new directions in
Maori art.
22 August Rt Hon Helen Clark, Prime
Minister and Minister for the Arts, Culture and Heritage:
The arts and public policy (followed by panel discussion to
wrap up the series, 2-3pm).