Staff spotlight: Scott Everson

As exhibitions designer and coordinator, Scott is part of the Collections team responsible for handling the artworks and physically delivering the exhibitions at the Gallery.

He works closely with curators, conservators, technicians and artists to develop the display and look of the gallery spaces, as well as overseeing their installation… which can involve anything from deciding where to hang a painting, to figuring out how to secure 70 live goldfish into the passenger seats of a chartered plane!

 

 

What’s the best part of your job?

The variety that comes from working with art and artists is always really exciting and inspirational. I think it's a real privilege to be part of what we do at the Gallery. Dealing with such interesting and culturally significant items while collaborating with talented people never really gets old.

 

What are the challenges?

Beside the regular practical and technical ones, working with content that many people, not just the artist, are so passionate about is a pretty delicate exercise at times. Concepts and practicality or ideal aesthetics don't always align, so establishing that level of mutual trust required to come up with a compromise that responds to everyone's needs can take a lot of work, particularly when you're working off plans and drawings rather than with the actual piece in a finished gallery space.

 

How do you want people to react when they walk into a space you’ve designed?

It really depends on the type of show and artwork we're displaying. Often the best exhibition design is one that only a few people might notice. Generally if we've got it right I'd hope visitors’ reactions and feelings will be driven by or at least align with the art on display and what the artists or curators originally wanted to communicate or provoke. Hopefully the exhibition design just helps this along a bit, enhancing the experience.

 

Out of all the shows you’ve worked on, which one(s) stand out as being your favourite?

I definitely could never pick one, that’s kind of like having to pick an all time favourite song and I'd probably come up with a different answer each day of the week. There are some like Yinka Shonibare MBE or For Keeps at the old NEW Gallery that still stand out because I'm such a fan of the elegant and slickly produced art that was in them.

 

With shows like the Julian & Josie Robertson Promised Gift and Degas to Dalí it's really humbling and memorable to be involved with such historically impressive and valuable pieces, while others like the Walters Prize or some of our large scale commissions are cool just because of the professional relationships and processes it took to deliver them.

 

We've just opened Who Shot Rock & Roll so of course that sticks out. I've always spent a lot of time going to live gigs so there's a lot of stuff in there that interests me. Gail Buckland (curator) and Roger Taberner (coordinating curator) were great to work with, giving me a lot of freedom to have some fun with the design and layout.

 

What are your interests outside of work?

I've got three old American cars that keep me entertained and poor when I'm not watching friends’ bands at some local dive bar. Actually, the only roadworthy car we've got at the moment is a ‘77 Chevy Camaro with a bit of drag racing history; it makes grocery shopping and running errands fun. Although they're gathering dust right now, I've also got a ‘51 Chevrolet I've been restoring and customising for way too long and a ‘51 Mercury Coupe which is more pile of rusty metal than vehicle at the moment.

 

Messing around with them in the garage is a good distraction if I'm getting too tied up in an exhibition, but for me there's also a real similarity with the kind of form versus function problem-solving and satisfaction I get from working on shows at the Gallery.

Pop Art Pets!

Andy Warhol’s portrait of a Daschund was the inspiration for our final studio session for Animals in Art. The idea that a pet dog could be the inspiration for an artwork really appealed to the children, and they loved looking at photos we had found of Warhol with his own pet Daschund Archie.

Working from photographs of their own pets, or favourite animals, the children combined collage, printing and ink drawing as they experimented with colour and multiples, with some great results!

Inspired by The Spider!

The children in the 6-8 year olds 'Animals in Art' studio course made some fantastic responses to the Alexander Calder work The Spider, seen in the Degas to Dalí exhibition. Working with the idea of animals as symbols in art, the children chose an animal that best represented a quality or characteristic that they possess. Charlie expressed his playful side when he chose to depict a monkey!

The children enjoyed the challenge of simplifying their chosen animal into the most basic lines, and removing any detail. We worked with string and glue to create a printing plate of their animal. Once this was dry, we ran it through the printing press with soaked paper on top to take an embossing of the plate. The results were spectacular!

Our mystery guest will be revealed in our next blog, as will our Studio mascot...

In the meantime, make sure you don't miss out on the exciting holiday workshops coming up, as well as the first lot of studio courses for term 3. Bookings are open!

Loyal dogs, wise owls and sneaky snakes! Sunday studio course with the 6-8 year olds

We are having a great time exploring animals in art with the 6-8 year olds in the Sunday studio courses at the moment. We began by looking at a number of Victorian paintings in the Tales of Love and Enchantment exhibition. The paintings we focused on were Legend of Sir Patrick Spens by James Archer, Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind by John Everett Millais, Married by Water Sadler, and Her First Love Letter by Marcus Stone. In each of these paintings we used the animals as clues to the story in the painting. The children loved the idea that the tortoise represents love, and that by painting it lumbering away from the couple in Married, Sadler has used the animal as a symbol to show that the couple was no longer close.

Walter Sadler, Married, 1896

Oil on canvas, Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

In the Degas to Dalí exhibition we discussed the Spider by Alexander Calder. The children really responded to the simple lines of the work and the way it moved with the wind. Drawing on the children's knowledge of animals from stories and movies, we brainstormed animals as symbols as we thought about what animal best represented our personal attributes. The children's simple line drawings of an animal was made into a printing plate using string and glue. We'll have some images of their prints soon!

Check out our next blog to see the VIP who visited the children in the studio during our second class!

‘Spiders, dancers and drama!' - the April school holiday workshops with the 9-12 year olds

In each holiday workshop for the 9-12 year olds we visited a work of art in the Degas to Dalí exhibition. We had a discussion in front of each work of art to gather inspiration and ideas to take back studio. In the studio we experimented with materials to create our own works of art in response to what we saw and discussed, as well as our own ideas.

On Tuesday’s workshop we focused on Alexander Calder’s hanging mobile. Looking carefully we all saw the spider in this abstract work of art. We loved the way the sculpture moved with the breeze caused by people entering the gallery space, and thought that the artist might be interested in nature, wind and balance. Back in the studio, the children worked with wire to create their own sculptures. It was a challenging material to work with but we all thought it I was worth the hard work! Take at look at these!

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, 1899
Lithograph in coloured inks on paper
Scottish National Gallery, © Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland
www.nationalgalleries.org

 On Wednesday we sat in front of Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting Jane Avril and used her costume, body language and facial expression to explore the work of art. We compared Toulouse-Lautrec’s work to Japanese prints to focus our attention on the flatness of the paint, and took the main ideas about posture, expression and flat colour back to the studio to create some dramatic figurative paintings.

Our final workshop focused on the popular and oversized Roy Lichtenstein painting In the Car. The children immediately identified that it reminded them of a comic and enjouyed the idea that something normally small and ‘everyday’ had been made so large. The idea that the scene was a moment in a larger story sparked some great discussion as we imagined what had happened before this scene – why was the man scowling? why was the woman annoyed? Armed with an understanding of how lines were used to indicate movement, and how facial expression and extreme close-up were used to heighten drama, the children painted their own large and dramatic moments to great effect!

The Gallery Educators and I had a fantastic time with the 9-12 year olds. The knowledge and enthusiasm that they brought to each workshop created a real feeling of excitement. Observers commented that the atmosphere in the Studio reminded them of their days at art school! The way they shared ideas, suggestions and positive feedback with each other created a communal learning environment that we were very excited to see!

‘Sand and sgraffito, bottles and blues’: 6-8 year olds Holiday Programme

The April school holiday workshops were a great success. The mornings were filled with energetic 6-8 year olds eager to look at and make art. In each workshop we visited a work of art in the Degas to Dalí exhibition and had a discussion together to gather inspiration and ideas from the work of art. We then returned to the studio to experiment with materials and create our own works of art in response to what we saw, what we talked about, and our own ideas.

The children on the Sgraffito and Sand workshop really enjoyed looking at Jean Dubuffet’s painting Villa sur la route [Villa by the road]. Armed with ideas about the physical quality of the paint, the children were excited to get in to the studio to experiment with applying thick paint and the technique of scratching a drawing into the wet paint with a stick. The children loved the scratching sound the sand and paint mixture made when they brushed it over their pastel under-painting.

Pablo Picasso’s Mère et enfant [Mother and Child] was the focus work for our exploration into colour mixing and the way artists use colour to express emotion. Sitting in front of the painting from Picasso’s Blue Period, children discussed how the colour blue made them feel. They named emotions like sad, frustrated, lonely, as well as feelings like relaxed, still and calm. We were able to use these words in our brainstorm in the Studio to give us ideas for the subject matter in our own blue painting.

We enjoyed energetic discussions in front of Giorgio Morandi’s Natura Morta [Still Life], particularly when we focused the discussion on comparing his work to a reproduction of highly detailed and realistic Dutch still life painting. After discussing the soft tones and shadows and the simplistic shapes and forms of the Morandi work, the children worked on experiments mixing tones using paint. 

It was such a successful fortnight of workshops. The uncomplicated way the children responded to the challenges and opportunities of each workshop was truly inspiring! The Gallery Educators and I really enjoyed working with the 6-8 year olds that attended the workshops and are eagerly awaiting the July School Holiday programme!