In New Environment

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31412, 4 July 1967, Page 13

In New Environment

By

David Barber,

N.Z.P.A. Sydney

Correspondent

Philip Trusttum a Christchurch artist who has travelled to Australia on a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council bursary, is settling down In Sydney and has high hopes of staging his first Australian exhibition by the end of the year. Trusttum has finished about 30 paintings since ar-1 riving in Sydney four months ago, in a desperate attempt to replace the bulk of his work which was destroyed in a fire shortly before he left home. “I have kept only seven or eight of them,” he said, "as I found it took a whila to settle down in my new environment, but I think things 1 are just coming right.” An abstract painter, 27-year-old Trusttum made a* major break-through recently i when the Gallery A in Sydney’s arty suburb of Pad-1

idington, accepted one of his [paintings for showing In a [group exhibition. i Negotiations are in hand for [a one-man exhibition at a leading Sydney gallery about the end of the year. Trusttrum. who trained at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, said: "I think my ideas may have changed slightly since coming here, but it is hard work to break into the Sydney art scene. “There seems to be more interest in art here, and there is a greater diversity of painting. “Art is very sophisticated here, and the galleries appear much more businesslike. Trying to get them to accept your paintings is like being a traveller selling his wares.” Trusttum lives in a typical artist's flat in a terraced house in Paddington with his wife Lee and 20-month-old son Martin and hopes to spend a while studying the art scenes in Melbourne and Adelaide before returning to .New Zealand. | “It’s very stimulating here and a lot of hard work, but!

in the long run I’m sure It will prove beneficial,” he said. Max Hutchinson, owner of Gallery A where Trusttum’s first Australian painting was exhibited, said: “He is quite promising. He has a long way to go, but he is young, and coming to Sydney will do him the world of good. He will learn a lot here.”