Change of scene to global centres

By HANNA SCOTT

Creative New Zealand has announced two international residencies for contemporary New Zealand artists to travel, research and work offshore. The first residency in New York will be taken up by Auckland-based sculptor Christopher Braddock. The second, in Berlin, by Ronnie van Hout.

From January, Braddock will be living and working for four months in the middle-East Side of New York as part of the International Studio and Curatorial Programme (ISCP). In August, Christchurch-born artist van Hout will travel to Berlin for a one-year residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanian.

The two residencies are hotly contested awards, and are offered by the Arts Council.

Both artists are delighted to be selected. Braddock says, "I am still pinching myself, even now." Smiling, Braddock thinks there was an element of luck in being awarded the prestigious award over other artists. Van Hout suggests, however, that the selectors "want to see people that are going to do work there, who have a plan, and who are working and showing work all the time."

Van Hout has just opened a solo exhibition in Wellington where he is the Rita Angus artist in residence at Massey University. His solo touring exhibition, I've Abandoned Me, opens at the Auckland Art Gallery this week. In addition, he will be creating a new installation for the Prospect exhibition at Wellington's City gallery in May.

Similarly, Braddock has a strong exhibition history, with a group exhibition Inn-House opening at Titirangi's Lopdell House this week and an exhibition in Zurich in April.

After living in Melbourne for several years, van Hout is celebrating his imminent move to Berlin and is preparing for his role as de-facto NZ ambassador. It is the third year in a row that the Berlin residency has been awarded to a male, New Zealand artist, living outside of the country.

Previous award winners Peter Robinson and Michael Stevenson were both living in Berlin when they received the award. Rather than reflecting a policy, however, this tradition has more to do with acknowledging the need for art and artists to work in an international context.

Van Hout says that the award to an artist living offshore is normal. "A lot of the problem in New Zealand is that we can't get over the idea that, even if you're not living in a country, you can still be a really important part of the culture. We don't all have to be Peter Jacksons. A lot of artists don't live in their culture of birth."

Berlin and New York are both cities with a high migratory artist population that cement this international approach. Berlin, says van Hout, "is a place where young artists from all over Europe have studios. It has a lot of youth culture, a place that is still quite fresh."

It is also a place that you are as likely to meet an artist from Scandinavia or Australia as you are to meet a native Berlin artist.

Van Hout will be using the residency to explore aspects of his European heritage. "I'll be attempting to link aspects of my father's life, his signwriting with his loom work by weaving one of his signs, on a factory loom not far from where he lived.

"The project will reconnect aspects of my parent's lives together, including their emigration from Europe to New Zealand and then my own connection to Europe. There are parallels between this process of repatriation and the reunion of the two halves of Berlin."

Bethanian curator Boris Kremer says that van Hout's themes, linking personal and world events, make his work stand out in an international context.

Braddock on the other hand will be drawing on the rich and specific resources of New York's extensive museum collections to fuel his own research. He will be researching American artists Robert Smithson and Louise Nevelson, and both artists have large research archives in New York.

He will be working on several themes: exploring ideas of the artist as ethnographer; the ways that museums present and frame our gallery experiences; and the way that museums confer objects with rarefied value.

There is a widely accepted tradition in literary circles for creative writers travelling, to research and to produce new work, following trailblazing examples such as Katherine Mansfield. The visual arts have many similar examples such as Frances Hodgkins or Len Lye. Opportunities for sustained periods of support to produce work are rare, so residencies are important in any artist's career.

Host organisations provide curatorial and administrative support as well as studio spaces with workshops. In Berlin artists have opportunities to show their works, and in New York fortnightly open studios are organised with visiting critics and curators.

The residencies are not just creating one-way air traffic either. Creative New Zealand and Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts provide opportunities for artists to take up residencies in New Zealand. Those opportunities exist for both local and foreign artists to visit, make work and actively contribute to local visual art communities.

The residencies are an important method for artists to get experience and exposure in an international context, providing enriching professional development experiences, research possibilities and networking opportunities.

Exhibitions

* What: Ronnie van Hout: I've Abandoned Me

* Where & when: Auckland Art Gallery from December 13

* What: Inn-House: on the fringe of heaven (with Christopher Braddock)

* Where & when: Lopdell House Gallery from December 11