(1982) Volume 5, Number 4

              volume s number 4 september 1982 australia & nevif zealand on the road with jah editor's note this is the second article in a series on my recent visit to australia and new zealand sponsored by art network and funded by the australian council and the queen elizabeth ii arts council of new zealand this article focuses in on new zealand and my two weeks there part 11 what do you say when the first stop in a new country is on the lip of a volcanic crater called mt eden this was my in troduction to new zealand home of the maoris alps and rotorua where tranquillity is translated into life where soci ety is at home with nature and where noise annoys appears on cancelled envelopes in the mail looking down on auckland with valerie richards librarian at the fine arts library at the university of auckland and the arranger of my tour in her country i thought i saw a miniature los angeles glistening at night but in fact it was a city called auckland with 800,000 inhabitants stretched around for 30 miles sunday brunch produced myriads of women artists as well as wystan curnow famed art and literary critic and poet from the university of auckland phil dadson new music performance artist and much more auckland is a very beautiful city surrounded by water but all of new zealand seems surrounded by water for it is a narrow island and water does predominate as does sky skies which you must experience to believe wellington whisked off to the airport with a wad of airplane tickets i took off for wellington where ian hunter and tony maekle met me ian is the quietly energetic trans-tasmanian catalyst for all austtralia-new zealand contacts among artists and tony is the curator of visual arts at the national art gallery looking at wellington is like looking at san francisco ge nova and parts of geneva with a population of only 150,000 the capital of new zealand looks idyllic and stun ning in the morning light but it has surprises for it is buffe ted by cold sea winds being close to antartica and is on the san andreas fault the same fault line that affects los ange les with earthquakes it's like living on a beautiful edge in my honor there was a bring a plate dinner or potluck and i met several artists in the wellington area as well as archivists and librarians the room i was staying in was very large and gracious with a beautifully tiled fireplace and large windows new zealand already seemed exceptionally warm and gracious to me the wine was abundant sometimes aus tralian the food was remarkably delicious and the desserts were beyond anyone's imagination the next morning i was whisked to the national gallery where i was slated to give a workshop on art documentation at lunch i met such a fine printer nigel thorp who has over 100 fonts of wooden type and ornaments and loves to make beautiful things from alphabet books to bookmarks from posters to broadsides he is in fact the printer for a very fine alphabet book by neil rowe a craft printer who 1 lives in the country outside of wellington and just prints away i also met vivian lynn an artist whose garden will be a work of art upon completion one which i was to learn later that the govett-brewster gallery wishes to buy but that problem has not been solved as yet i also had the great pleasure of walking around the national gallery with ian hunter a remarkably storyteller in his own right who told me about the maori culture as we were looking at the arti facts in the national museum the repository of a great col lection of maori arts and crafts he told me about the story sticks a form of book which the maori use to tell different tales depending upon the markings on the stick known only to the official storytellers of the tribe after the afternoon session of the workshop i walked through the collection of contemporary art at the national gallery and was delighted to see an installation made by andrew drummond especially for the space called cycles stages in which the artist uses the human body to express larger ideas there is a central figure made of bandages and hardened resin molded over the artist's own body an ave nue of willow branches stripped of their leaves 6 projected photographs of willow trees in full summer 3 triangles of issn 0160-0699