Philippa Stevenson: Artistic cream comes to cow country

The catch-phrase for Morrinsville - cream of the country - is as apt as you are going to get in the heart of Waikato dairyland.

But some well-advanced plans are likely to mean the description will become just as fitting for the town's art and cultural reputation.

A significant group in Morrinsville is backing development of a complex that will include an art gallery permanently displaying works from the country's best private collection of contemporary and emerging New Zealand artists - the 4000-piece Wallace Collection.

Arguably, Morrinsville's last association with anything like contemporary culture was as the inspiration for Denton, the small town that Rocky Horror Show characters Brad and Janet escaped from.

Even among the other small towns in the Matamata-Piako district, Morrinsville's lack of much but the utilitarian is a running joke.

District councillor and resident Eric Sherburd says Matamata has its historic Firth Tower and Hobbiton, and Te Aroha its equally historic claim as an Edwardian mineral spa.

Both get significant council support while, with little cultural heritage to crow about, "Morrinsville gets $1000 and its lawns mowed".

Sherburd is confident that is about to change after a four-year-old proposal by the Morrinsville Historical Society for a new home for its Morrin Museum blossomed last year into a $3 million plan for a combined art gallery and heritage centre.

The breakthrough came when arts patron and collector James Wallace offered to permanently cycle his trust's art collection through a purpose-built gallery in the town as well as support the project in other ways, including paying for the building's design.

Wallace, who is chairman and managing director of the Wallace Corporation, which operates meatworks, rendering plants and other facilities on Morrinsville's outskirts, says he wanted to help to add "another dimension" to the town.

"A lot of our employees are from there and Morrinsville doesn't have much of an arts base," he told me. "It's very important in anyone's life to have more than one dimension to it."

Wallace began collecting New Zealand art in the mid-1960s, transferring the collection to a charitable trust in 1992. It has the most extensive collection of a number of major artists such as Toss Woollaston and Philip Trusttum.

To be fair to the artists and the public, he says, works from the collection are now cycled through 18 different venues, including Waikato University's performing arts centre, and an Auckland Queen St gallery.

With a gallery dedicated to the collection, however, the proposed Morrinsville centre will be a particular focus for the trust, Wallace says.

"We'll put together special exhibitions and change them regularly to give people good reason to go back," he says, adding that the gallery will be used for social events "and people will be surrounded by art".

Arts Waikato chief executive Hilary Falconer is thrilled by the plans and picks they will have far-reaching effects.

"As a collection of national significance it will receive visitors from around the country and internationally. Artists who live in the region but exhibit in Auckland will see the value in setting up galleries in Morrinsville. A dedicated gallery for local artists within the facility will provide a high-profile focus.

"An arts precinct ... gives a place a cultural heart."

Sherburd, who has spearheaded the project, says the aim is to do it in two stages with a $2.1 million art gallery completed next year and a $900,000 heritage centre finished in time for the January 2008 centenary of the town's founding.

A steering committee of local business, art and historical society representatives aims to raise the money from central and local government, district businesses and individuals.

Wallace has already paid for the design of an 825sq m building by Auckland architect Justin Marler of Pearson and Associates. Last month the Matamata Piako District Council granted $5000 towards preparation of a business plan and a study of the proposed site - central sections next to the library on the corner of Thames and Canada Sts.

If the momentum is maintained, a whole new group of people could be licking their lips over Morrinsville - art lovers, rather than milk lovers.

www.wallaceartstrust.org.nz