School's century of art teaching documented

Press, 18 May 1982, Page 26

School's century of art teaching documented

An exhibition which can happen only once in 100 years will open in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery during Queen's Birthday weekend.

It is the centennial exhibition of the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts. Tha school has planned a variety of lectures, exhibitions, and other events with which to celebrate its centenary next month. One of its major efforts is the exhibition in the McDougall Gallery. This -is being mounted by the gallery in association with the school, and will be open to the public from June 5 to July 18.

The school and gallery have retained links in recent years through their staffs. The present director of the gallery (Mr John Coley) is a graduate of the school and the previous director (Dr Rodney Wilson) was a lecturer there in art history. The exhibition will include works by students and staff, photographs, documentary material, and memorabilia connected with the history of the school since its inception in 1882, when it was called the Canterbury College School of Art and housed in the old Girls’ High School building on the corner of Hereford Street and Rolles-

ton Avenue. The move in 1957 to “Okeover” House, Ham, where it functioned in isolation for several years until the completion of the University of Canterbury, and finally its most recent move in 1979 to permanent new buildings on the Ham campus will be documented in the exhibition. During its history the nature of the school’s curriculum has undergone a number of changes. In its earliest years emphasis was placed on instruction in “arts and crafts” and their “practical application to the requirements of trade and manufactures,” modelled on

the Schools of Design established under the art department of the Council of Education in South Kensington, London. During the twenties and thirties, instruction in the crafts and in architecture was eased out, partly as a result of the establishment of rival institutions. When Archibald F. Nicoll w-as director, emphasis was placed more and more on drawing and painting. This era produced many artists of note including Leonard Booth, Sydney Thompson, Cecil and Elizabeth Kelly, Evelyn Polson (better known as Evelyn Page), Ngaio Marsh, Rata Lovell-Smith, Olivia Spencer-Bower, Robert Procter, Alfred Walsh and Grace Butler. Prominent painters of the forties and fifties with close links to the school include W. A. Sutton, Rita Angus, Austen Deans, and Sir Toss Woollaston.

During the sixties painting and sculpture were the dominanant departments. Teachers and students included some of the country’s leading artists, among them Don Peebles, Doris Lusk, John Panting, Tom Taylor, Neil Dawson, Pat Hanly, Quentin MacFarlane, and Philip Trusttum. The changing demands of the seventies resulted in the establishment of a film-mak-ing department, while printmaking and graphic design Assumed a more important

role. An indication of the success of these new developments was the success of the film “A State of Siege,” made by two honours film students, Anthony White and Vincent Ward.

As the only art school in New Zealand to have maintained an unbroken record of art instruction for one hundred years, the school occupies a unique place in the history of New Zealand education. The, exhibition will provide an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the past as well as a chance to look forward to the possibilities for the future, says the McDougall Gallery.

Organ recital A recital featuring the symphonic suite, “Ascension Suite,” by the French composer, Olivier Messiaen, will be given on Thursday in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament by the cathedral organist, Don Whelan, with the Basilica Brass Ensemble. The recital, which will start at 8 p.m., will mark Ascension Thursday. It will be preceded by a choral festival Mass, in which more than 100 singers from various parts of Canterbury will take part. Homework

Visitors to an exhibition which opened last night in the Brooke/Gifford Gallery will get an unusual insight

into the processes which contribute to the evolution of a completed work of art.

Entitled “Homework," it features about 50 items by the well-known Auckland painter, Patrick Hanly. They include drawings, studies, prints, and exercises which are described as “essential to the resolving of graphic ideas and themes.” The exhibition is intended to be a survey of the way in which the artist selects and develops his material. It will remain open until June 4. Music aid About 75 young musicians in provincial and country areas are receiving advanced tuition from teachers based in main centres under a regional teaching scheme run by the Music Federation.

The scheme, which is subsidised $2 for $1 by the Ministry of Recreation and Sport, began four years ago and has shown steady growth, according to the federation’s manager, Miss Elisabeth Airey. In its first year only about a dozen students used it. Students are allotted maincentre teachers where none in their own regions are able, to advance them further in their studies. Teachers in small centres often advised their best pupils to investigate the regional teaching scheme, Miss Airey said. Twenty individual regional teaching pro-

grammes were running under the scheme, she said. The centres from which the students came include Kaitaia, Whangarei, Hamilton, Napier, Hastings, Blenheim, Nelson, Ranfurly, and Invercargill.

Travel costs are met, but the students pay for the tuition.

No restriction is imposed on the type of instrument for which advanced tuition is available. For example, a Christchurch teen-ager flies to Wellington once a month to learn advanced timpani techniques and a 15ryear-old Whangarei piano accordion player travels regularly to Auckland for studies for her teacher’s diploma from the Royal School of Music.

The regional teaching scheme has been responsible at least in part for the establishment of a hew small industry in Whangarei.

To assist his sister with the practice she needed after advanced harp lessons in Auckland, a young Whangarei man obtained plans for the instrument from a local library, and built pne for her. He is now building harps full time, and has sold them throughout the North Island.

The biggest number of young musicians taking lessons from one teacher is a group of 27 piano students in Ranfurly. Their teacher visits them once a week from Dunedin, 130 km away. Oboe in Europe

A former Christchurch oboist, Vicki Philipson, is at present on tour with the West German Youth Orchestra as principal oboist. She will play in six concerts in Germany and six in Italy. At the age of 14 Vicki Philipson was selected as first oboist for the New Zealand Youth Orchestra when it toured Britain, China and Japan. Later she studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, under John Hopkins, toured Europe with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, and afterwards played in China with the Australian Youth Orchestra. Before leaving Australia to study in Freiburgh, she held appointments with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Elizabethan Trust Orchestra, based in Melbourne. She is now a student of the West Berlin Conservatorium, and frequently performs with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.