Young N.Z. Sculptor’s Success In London

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32313, 3 June 1970, Page 1

Young N.Z. Sculptor’s Success In London

A spacious studio near the heart of London for £6 a week—-this is the dream that has been realised by a young New Zealand - born sculptor, Stephen Furlonger, who is back in his home country this year as visiting lecturer at Auckland University’s School of Fine Arts.

The studio is one floor of a five-storey warehouse in Shoreditch, one of many that have fallen vacant in recent years, partly as a result of the British economic squeeze having forced small firms out of business and partly because of difficulty of access for trucks through old London’s narrow streets.

Mr Furlonger, with John Panting, another New Zea-land-born sculptor living in London, leased the building for £3O a week from the Church Commissioners when the previous occupant, a small furniture company, went out of business.

The area is due for redevelopment in about 10 years, but until then it will provide the two New Zealanders and

the other artists to whom they have sub-let the upper floors a combination of opportunities seldom available to young British artists—an inexpensive place to work, and a place to exhibit. They have been quick to take advantage of these opportunities, first by seeking, as a group, support from the Arts Council—and getting it —and second by opening a small gallery on the ground floor, which had been kept vacant

The exhibitions were not among their plans when they took over the building, but were started by one member of the group, who decided to show his work and spent £4OO advertising it in “Art Forum.” The investment was more than repaid when three of the six sculptures on show were sold; and since then several more exhibitions have been held, with similar success.

Now the group is becoming known in London, and others are moving into the same area.

But, rewarding though it is, the warehouse-gallery does not provide Mr Furlonger with his bread and butter. To get this he finds it necessary, as do most other artists liv-

ing in Britain, to spend much of his time teaching. Some of this teaching has been done at the Royal College of Art, which takes only graduate students, and to which Mr Furlonger himself went in 1961 on an Arts Council bursary after having graduated with honours from the Canterbury University School of Fine Aris at Ham.

Teaching; too, has its problems in England. Last year Mr Furlonger taught three days a week at the Coventry School of Art; and to do this he had to travel 90 miles from his home in London. But this inconvenience is offset to some degree by the fact that teachers in tertiary art institutions in England are regarded differently from those in New Zealand. in Coventry he is not required to give formal lectures, but merely mingles with the students to discuss their work with them. “1 am hired to teach on the basis of my ability as a sculptor,” he said. And he added, perhaps not altogether seriously, “if 1 were to teach full-time 1 would be endangering my status as an artist” New Zealand art schools are equivalent to the better

English provincial schools, he says; But there is an important difference—in England, entry is much more competitive, and students are forced to go where there is a place, which may be anywhere in England or Scotland.

Also, the English schools have preliminary courses which New Zealand institutions do not have, and as a result the students are a year or two older. Perhaps because of these factors the students work very hard, “certainly harder than the Auckland students,” he says. If entry to British art schools is difficult, entry to the exhibition circuit is virtually impossible. The big public galleries in London do not show the work of “unknowns,” and the dealer galleries concentrate on their own “stables” of well-known artists whose work sells quickly and easily. Mr Furlonger is lucky in that, by “being in the.right place at the right time” he has found an outlet for his work in a gallery in Amsterdam.

But the Netherlands is well ahead of England in the sale of works of art—and in public art collections, he says.

There is much greater public acceptance of art works there and some magnificent collections, of modern works are to be found in quite small galleries; and Dutch students are even prepared to buy art works on hire purchase. Most of Mr Furlonger’s own works have been sold in this way. Mr Furlonger is in Christchurch for a week, as visiting lecturer at the School of Art at Ham. He will give a public lecture on sculpture in the science block at Ham at 8 p.m. tonight