Auckland Arts Advance

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30178, 9 July 1963, Page 12

Auckland Arts Advance

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 8. Auckland is much more artistically advanced than Wellington, the artist, Patrick Hanly, said tonight. His paintings are being exhibited in Auckland and Wellington. Auckland’s vital artistic climate was largely due to the policy- of the Auckland City Gallery, Mr Hanly said. The Auckland and Melbourne galleries were the only two in the Southern Hemisphere with distinguished reputations overseas

“The Auckland gallery does a better job than the National Art Gallery in Wellington. 1

think it has more money to spend and it spends it wisely For example, its sculpture collection has increased in value six times since its initial price ’’ People’s attitude to painting in New Zealand was at least 50 years behind the timgs, said Mr Hanly. At Government level, artistic talents were not used for practical purposes, such as industrial and theatrical design. “Our advertising abroad is appalling. It’s of the lowest standard I have ever seen,” he said. Even to New Zealand House in London, hardly any designs by the country’s own artists were used.

Mr Hanly is to exhibit works at the Paris Biennale, 1963 “A country’s prestige can hang on such an exhibition,” he said. “Australia was put on the map at the last Paris Biennale,” he said. In his pictures of New

Zealand, Mr > Hanly endeavours to jecord something of the “antipodean passiveness." “There are no people in them; I don’t see how I can put them m.”

He has exhibited with the London group, the Young Contemporaries, the Royal Society of British Artists, the International Artists’ Exhibition. and the Commonwealth Artists’ Exhibition at the Edinburgh Festival. He was born in New Zealand in 1932 and studied art at the Canterbury University School of Art He attended the Chelsea School of Art in London and painted in Spain. Mr Hanly was awarded a British Art Council scholarship to go to Jugoslavia, the Italian Government scholarship in 1960, and the Dutch Government scholarship in

1961. “I must have a knack for winning he said, “but not one of them was from New Zealand.”