Artist becomes a player with class

Kate Small with one of the works in her Physical Education series. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Painter Kate Small has found herself watching a lot of school sport.

That might be a reflection of what's to do in Masterton on a Saturday afternoon, but as an artist she can learn from the rituals of everyday life.

"A friend got me down to take some hockey photos, and it got me thinking, 'This is an amazing experience'," says Small.

"I am intrigued by the whole social experience, particularly the parents on the sidelines."

Small's show at Anna Miles, Physical Education, features small groups of gym-clad children standing in the playing fields of archetypical New Zealand schools.

"It's not a celebration of athleticism, more a record of banal activity.

"A lot of New Zealand schooling is based around sport, and that can be isolating if you are a little unco-ordinated," says Small, who says she was "the ungainly giraffe" in the netball team.

"When I was teaching I had to coach, and I hated that.

"I got into trouble. The kids would be running around on the netball court and I'd be reading a book."

Despite its importance in the New Zealand psyche, few artists have tackled sport as a theme.

Garth Tapper and Trevor Moffitt painted rugby games, and Philip Trusttum used tennis as a theme.

Small says many of her friends don't like her current subject matter. "There is too much of what people want to avoid."

For many people, pursuing art was a reaction against the sports culture.

Art is rarely a team activity, although many of the requirements for success are the same - discipline, practice, the building up of muscle skills and co-ordination.

"You have to have that self-discipline to be an artist, to get up every day and spend time in the studio," says Small, who graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1990.

Then again, sport is as much the theme of Small's new works as the beach was of her last show - not very much.

As a formalist painter, the subject matter gives her something to paint - but the painting is really about composition, colour, line, the arrangements of the elements on the canvas, rather than the character or kineticism of sport.

"A playing field is sort of boxed in. When you think of any field, it has lines. You have to play in that square, or rectangle, or oval."

Small paints within a square, always a difficult space to resolve in composition.

"I like it for that. I've spent a lot of time fitting my work to the square format. I like the challenge," she says.

For the new series Small read lots of school histories, studying pictures of the buildings.

Now she can't go past a school without thinking of its form.

"Just coming to the gallery, I went by Richmond Rd School and couldn't stop myself having a good look at it, the way the buildings wrap all the way round, enclosing a big space, and the sort of mustard colour it is painted."

* Physical Education by Kate Small is at Anna Miles Gallery, 4J Canterbury Arcade, to July 29