Research and resources

We are Auckland’s wharenui/home for authentic and meaningful engagement with art for all... 

Over the past couple of years, we’ve started working on expanding what we can offer for secondary students and their teachers, and this statement – part of the Gallery’s new purpose/values/vision statement, really resonates with much of our thinking over this time.

We are very conscious that the Gallery and its resources have a lot of possibility for use in schools, with potential applications across a broad range of subject areas. And we know from our stats that many schools aren’t currently accessing these resources – a shame for many reasons, not least because they’re owned by the very people not accessing them!

So, how do we support meaningful and authentic engagement with this institution and its resources, by students and teachers in a diverse range of subjects? Especially when our subject speciality sits most specifically in the Visual Arts and Art History?

What we know is that you can’t have authentic, meaningful engagement if you don’t know your audience well – what’s happening for them, the challenges they face, and the needs they have. If you can understand that, you’re at a point where you can potentially respond to real needs – and ideally you’ve got a great opportunity to collaborate together, and share your varied expertise in creating the best possible resources and experiences for all.

So as part of this push we undertook a small research project earlier this year. We asked 18 teachers from nine schools, in Visual Art, Art History, English and History, to tell us about their experiences and needs. We also shared specifically the types of resources we have available (for example, the art, our physical environment, our staffing expertise, resources like our research library) and asked what they imagined we could do with these that could best benefit their needs. Lots of interesting data came out of these conversations . . . and even more questions for us to follow up in the future! I’ll share more about our findings (and further questions) in the coming months, but wanted now to share a few, and what we’re doing now to start to respond in one area.

All the teachers we talked to:

• were enthusiastic about the possibilities of engaging with the Gallery and its resources in their subjects, and had lots of ideas about how meaningful connections could be made 
• needed to teach students visual analysis skills 
• said that help in doing this would be appreciated, as especially for English and History, this wasn’t something that teachers necessarily felt confident in doing 
• identified how an important focus in the classroom is in developing students’ research skills 
• found it difficult to locate accessible, reliable content that could be used to support students in this process; and in relation to art – a serious lack of information on New Zealand (and even international) art, artists and contexts 

In response to the last couple of points, we’ve started a process of developing some of this content, alongside support activities and resources that could be used or adapted for use by teachers both in the classroom and the Gallery.

For two upcoming collection shows on display at the Gallery during Term 4, 2014 and Term 1, 2015 (Age of Turmoil: Art in Germany 1900–1923 and The Social Life of Things) we’ve developed bibliographies of books, articles and websites students can access for further research. Alongside this, for Age of Turmoil, we’ve developed:

• a PDF with an overview of the show, plus detailed descriptions of a good number of the key works 
• two videos of the curator – one with him talking to a PowerPoint where he discusses the German context in the period 1900–1923, the other where he shares his curatorial process in developing the show (including photographic images of his planning process) 
• curriculum aligned worksheets tailored specifically for students of Art History, Visual Art, History and English 

We intend to continue developing resources for future shows, and we’ve got many more ideas for how we could develop these even further, but we’d love your thoughts to help with this. Feel free to let us know any feedback you have on these resources – how they work for you, how they could be improved, plus any other ideas you might have for other resources of any kind.

We’d also love to hear your feedback on the findings shared above – do these reflect your experiences? Is there more you’d like to share, or a different perspective not represented?

Feel free to respond in the comments section below, or email us at education@aucklandartgallery.govt.nz with your thoughts.

– Christa Napier-Robertson, Schools Programme Coordinator

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Anyone with interested in contemporary art must have read books by uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. I asked our librarian Tom Irwin to research holdings of his books in New Zealand libraries. He found 137 entries. All can be inter-loaned via your local library.

Click here for New Zealand library holdings of Obrist's books.

One of my favourite Obrist books is do it – the compendium. This is a publication that affirms connections between life and art. It is humorous and engaging. For instance, Ben Kinmont suggests that we “invite a stranger into [our] home for breakfast.” 

"In 1993 I was at Café Select in Paris with Bertrand Lavier and Christian Boltanski discussing instruction works and how-to manuals and then we had this idea: what would happen if we started an exhibition that wouldn’t ever stop?" -  Hans Ulrich Obrist

Obrist’s book marks the 20th anniversary of his collaborative art project.  Artists prepare texts which become instructions for others to make artworks. Over 50 do it projects have happened in many locations.

Dwell has prepared a slide show about the publication.

Another profiles the book and quotes Louise Bourgeois.

hereelsewhere reiterates the life/art reality of the do it project

Brainpickings has a terrific response to Obrist’s book noting that Nairy Baghramian recommends “Following Gertrude Stein, every now and then sit with your back on nature.”

“do it is a kind of Catcher in the Rye for the curatorial world; it is a transformative mandatory read that connects a blur of dots into a cohesive and inviting image of both the art universe and the universe of ideas.”  - Douglas Coupland

Learning about archival practice: The Dennis (Knight) Turner Archive at Auckland Art Gallery

Dennis Turner Archive, E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2013

Recently I started a practicum at the E H McCormick Research Library to learn what the work of an archivist is like within an art institution. I started out having a limited amount of knowledge of what archiving is all about after taking an archive paper at Victoria University as part of the Master of Information Studies programme. Having a background in art, I wanted to use my new found knowledge from my studies in a practical work setting that combines both of my interests.

Archiving consists of many ‘steps’ that require patience, combined with careful handling of materials. Dennis Turner’s archive arrived at the gallery in well-used boxes (as pictured on left, above), which once opened smelt musty, and of cigarette smoke. A lot of the paper and clear files were brown with age. Sometimes archives can be in a damaged condition and it can pay to check them before deciding to acquire them for an institution. However, Turner’s work was in good condition despite the smell. It was important to keep the original order of the papers as Turner had already ordered the material into folders in date order. By keeping the archive in a similar state to how it arrived, it gives a sense of the way Turner worked and ordered his own life.

The archive contains a variety of media. There is a box of personal photographs sorted into enclosures with the original captioning. In addition, there are two boxes of research drawings and four boxes of associated press clippings, photos of artworks, catalogues and a bit of correspondence. Turner was a handsome man and not shy of the camera. There are photos where he poses with his artist’s palette, violin, at the beach, studio, with friends and his artworks. The archive focuses a lot on the time when he returned to NZ in 1992 for an artist’s residency at the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui. His exhibition Turner’s Tiki is reflected in the archive with a large series of research drawings of tiki, moko, koru and symbol motifs dated 1991–3. Turner stated that he threw out a lot of his work from London, seemingly as a cathartic ritual for him and returned to his earlier motifs of the 1950s. I got the sense from the materials in the archive that he primarily wanted to share his experiences and interests from his time in New Zealand rather than his London years, perhaps because he was no longer interested in that work or because he thought no one here would be. Although, some of his later work can be seen on a video recording of his works called Here there here, selected works 1943–93.

The archive is a useful resource for anyone interested in Oceanic and Māori motifs and symbolic art. Reading about his frustrations with the New Zealand art world is interesting in his biographical notes. I have always been interested in looking at another’s life and their accumulated ‘stuff” which has a fascination that can touch on voyeurism. Turner has been very selective as to what he has included in the archive and does not get very personal, staying quite businesslike in the documentation of his work. If you look or read closely however, you can start to get a sense of the real person that was Dennis (Knight) Turner. His name change (which happened three times) is another interesting story explained within the artist file. In his later years, he preferred the name Dennis Turner without the Knight part, even though that is how others recognise him.

Preserving artists’ archives helps art historians to trace the context behind an artwork and adds another dimension to an artist’s legacy. The Dennis Turner archive can be viewed by appointment at the E H McCormick Research Library and Auckland Art Gallery has four of Turner’s artworks in the collection. There will also be a show on at the Gus Fisher Gallery early next year, curated by Richard Wolfe who liaised with Turner and the Auckland Art Gallery to acquire the archive.

- Hayley Webb, Intern, E H McCormick Research Library

Gallery garage sales - then and now

Last week in our weekly staff newsletter I shared a link to this post by artist and designer Kelli Anderson, about her involvement in Martha Rosler's exhibition Meta-Monumental Garage Sale at MoMA. Anderson designed a newspaper available as part of the exhibition, which took the form of a real-life gigantic garage sale in MoMA's atrium.

One of our research librarians replied to let me know that the Gallery once held its own garage-sale-as-exhibition - exactly 37 years ago to the day!

On 5 December 1975 artist David Mealing's week-long exhibition Jumble Sale opened at the Gallery. You can read about the kerfuffle it caused, and Wystan Curnow's opinion on its overall effect, on pages 29-30 of this Gallery Quarterly.

Incidentally, David Mealing is now curator and manager of the NZ Cricket Museum in Wellington.

Receiving the Greg Semu Archive

One of the joys of being an archivist at the Auckland Art Gallery is the contact I have with artists, so it was with a great sense of anticipation that I arranged to meet with photographer Greg Semu on a recent visit to Auckland to discuss the deposit of his archive with the E H McCormick Research Library. Greg agreed to the long-term loan of his negatives, proof sheets and reels of film.  

When I went with one of our registrars to collect the material, our first archive from a Pacific artist, Greg asked whether he might add to the loan.  So now, we are lucky enough to have in addition, hundreds of prints, examples of Greg’s commercial work in the form of magazines and videos, exhibition ephemera and diaries, as well as the negatives.

Greg generously allowed the Research Library to exhibit items from the archive immediately. With Home AKL soon to be shown, we decided to mount a display in the Library’s exhibition case to celebrate the loan and give Gallery visitors some idea of the practice of a very significant New Zealand photographer. 

Better to Give: The Greg Semu Archive will be on display until Monday 22 October outside the Library entrance on the Mezzanine level. You can also find out more about all the artists represented in Home AKL (and ask them questions!) on the exhibition's Facebook page.