KEY POINTS:
With the visual overload provided by its mountain of singular beauty, rolling farmland and a dramatic coastline, the richness of art in Taranaki comes as no surprise.
New Zealand is not short of artists anywhere but the crop here seems particularly abundant and varied. Over a couple of days you can go from high art, approachable only through the mediation of curators initiated in the arcane mysteries, to tourist mementos: from installations to earrings. And this is only touching the surface.
New Plymouth makes an artistic statement that's hard to miss with Len Lye's spectacular - and once controversial - Wind Wand now an accepted signature of the New Plymouth Coastal Walkway. But away from civic art what is particularly appealing is that many of the artists here seem to go out of their way to provide an opportunity to see not only the finished work but the work in progress.
At the other end of the spectrum from Lye's 45m creation, I was captivated by the gem-like perfection of the work of Sally Laing. Her jewellery (pictured) draws on natural forms and transmutes them - in the layers of fired glass and precious metals of enamel - into exquisite pieces. A visit to her studio, where she also runs workshops, is to glimpse a vision which combines sensitivity to place with a glowing aesthetic and brilliant workmanship.
She is one of a group of artists at Oakura who have combined in a loose alliance to provide a tempting glimpse of what is on offer in this small area alone. With Laing at the high craft end is the work of Rob Wright, whose jewellery combines gold, silver and diamonds and the extraordinary beauty of the little known paua pearls. He too draws on local elements and stylised mountain motifs of refined simplicity recur in the most extravagant settings.
Another stop on this circuit is the Garden Pottery of Joyce Young. The garden is a work of art in its own right but makes a wholly appropriate setting for her quirky pukekos, kingfishers, moreporks and, more unusually, fungus which features in her wall panels.
The influence of the Taranaki landscape is demonstrably a major influence in much of the work of Margaret Scott and a visit to her "Art by the Sea" studio in Oakura is an opportunity to see a hard-working artist in action. There is everything from big canvases to postcards and tablemats.
The landscape, farming and natural life of Taranaki, where she has spent her life, obviously looms large but she also shifts focus with some enigmatic hints of the exotic, some delightful water colours of European scenes and the recurrence of motifs that are more personal than regional.
The Oakura circuit is a small grouping but a more substantial collection of regional artists comes at the pleasingly named Real TArt Gallery (TArt standing for Taranaki Art), a community gallery that draws on more than 200 local artists. Since 2006, it has been housed in the 1920s Masters building and it provides a showcase for an ever-changing series of exhibitions.
We caught up with just one of Real TArt's contributors at the studio of Waldo Hartley in a disused milk factory at Okato. Here was work of imagination and stunning technical facility ranging from oddball social comment to remarkable little trompe-l'oeil paintings on rocks.
Waldo, like some of the others mentioned here, is a transplant into Taranaki but whether born and bred or an import there seems to be something about the place that feeds oxygen to the artistic imagination.
Depending on how you approach it, the summit of the artistic pyramid could be regarded as being represented by the Govett Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth, internationally known and with international exhibitors. In New Zealand it is, of course, perpetually identified with the work of Lye, the kinetic art and experimental film pioneer who, although he died in 1980, still has the power to stir passion in the people of New Plymouth when it comes to ratepayers having to put money into a centre in his honour.
Regardless of the outcome of this debate, Lye continues to exercise a powerful presence. The Govett Brewster opened in 1970 and, seven years later, held New Zealand's first Lye exhibition. After his death in 1980, a significant proportion of his work returned to the Govett Brewster which has a full-time curator devoted to his work and archive.
And apart from Lye, the Govett Brewster continues to fly the flag of the modern. Typical of what it offers was the New Nature exhibition on show when we visited. This featured work from New Zealand, Japan, China, South Korea and Antarctica and included the full arsenal of contemporary work from video drawing, photography, painting, carpet design to an outdoor sound sculpture.
This was work, interesting and enjoyable, with an international perspective but the Govett Brewster does seem to keep itself rooted in Taranaki and when we were there was also involved in a cross-referenced exercise with the Puke Ariki Museum and information centre.
The Govett Brewster work - "a library to scale" by Ann Shelton - recreated in life-sized colour photographs the extraordinary collection of local identity Fredrick B. Butler, who over 60 years accumulated 3500 scrapbooks which he mounted in second-hand books bound with wall paper.
Simultaneously Puke Ariki was showing an exhibition of Butler's quilts, extraordinary pieces of work both in themselves and, like his scrapbooks, as evocative fragments of a vanished past.
Taranaki values its artists and they in turn provide the region with some rare gifts.
*********************************************************
GETTING THERE
Air New Zealand flies up to eight times a day from New Plymouth to Auckland return and up to seven times a day New Plymouth to Wellington return. See www.airnz.co.nz or call (0800) 737-000
ART GALLERIES
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Queen St, New Plymouth. See www.govettbrewster.com. 10am to 5pm daily.
Puke Ariki regional museum, library and information centre. 1 Ariki St, New Plymouth. See www.pukeariki.com.
Real TArt Gallery, 19 Egmont St, New Plymouth. See www.tact.org.nz/realtart.htm or http://virtual.tart.co.nz.
Sally Laing, jewellery and enameller, PO Box 5080, Westown, New Plymouth. See www.sallylaing.com. Studio visits by arrangement and classes available.
Ringcraft Moana, 109 Surrey Hill Rd, Oakura. www.nzpearl.com.
Joyce Young, Garden Studio, 136 Wairau Rd, RD4, Oakura. Pottery. Website through virtual tart (above).
Margaret Scott, Art by the Sea studio, 58 Messenger Tce, Oakura. Website through virtual tart.
Alan (Waldo) Hartley, painter. Old South Rd, Okato http://www.tart.co.nz/Waldo/waldo.htm.
MORE INFORMATION
See Venture Taranaki's website at www.taranaki.co.nz
