International exhibition at Aratoi

ON DISPLAY: Three Hydrangea Stems, a work by Rita Dibert. PICTURE / SUPPLIED

Whanganui's Rita Dibert is one of 100 artists from around the world exhibiting their work at a six-week show.
New Zealand Pacific Studio, the international residency centre for artists, located in the hills of Mount Bruce, Wairarapa, mounts the international exhibition ART IS A LIVING THING, with work by 100 of its artists from 15 countries, and from each of the 15 years the centre has been operating. The show runs from December 3 to January 15 next year, at Aratoi Museum in Masterton.
The multi-media exhibition, supported by Trust House, also features film, song and literature in a continuous two and a half-hour projection, and performances on the opening and closing weekends, with entry by koha.
The gallery, once a church, has been designed to reflect the 1911 villa that is NZ Pacific Studio, the stage area - once an altar - to symbolise the home's interior. A purpose-built pavilion in the main gallery floor space represents the villa's formal front garden, and in the vestibule, a site-specific sound installation of Mount Bruce birdsong, with an intimate self-portrait by Kedron Parker, who has been in residence at NZ Pacific Studio seven times.
ART IS A LIVING THING presents a diversity of creativity and experience:
3-D Leo Cappel (Netherlands/NZ) with hand-held sculptures of ceramic, bronze, steel, Lorna Crane (AUS) with three pianola rolls, Nicola Dench (NZ) with two ceramic monoprint tiles, Justine Fletcher (NZ) who created 607 pendants to honour the 607 Wairarapa suffragettes, Brooke Holve (USA) art book, Marian Hulshof (Netherlands) with paint and chalk on denim jeans, Veronika Licher (Germany) paint and graphite on wallpaper. Drawings Talysha Bujold-Abu (Canada) using red India ink, Susan diRende (USA) on credit card blanks, Ong Si Hui (Singapore) on paper.
Fibre art Stefanie Smith (Canada) of two tui, Tracy White (NZ) of hands.
Film/video/animation Denise Batchelor (NZ), Kyle Browne (USA), Annelyse Gelman (NZ/Germany), Adam Von Penfold (NZ).
Literature Melanie Carter (USA/Egypt), Tracy Farr (NZ), Janis Freegard (NZ), Ya-Wen Ho (Taiwan/NZ), Zoe Meager (NZ), Yukari Nikawa (Japan), Zheng Danyi (China/Hong Kong).
Music Jona Byron (AUS), Sarah Dill (USA), Phil Kueffer and Michele Bachmann (Switzerland).
Paintings Emma Chalmers (NZ), Arie Hellendoorn (NZ), Mark Manning (USA), Lorraine Rastorfer (NZ), Bevan Shaw (NZ).
Photography Adi Brown (NZ), Rita Dibert (NZ), Jane Zusters (NZ).
and Printmaking Nadia Kleindanze (AUS) of kowhai, Mark Johnsen (USA) of Mount Bruce landscape.
The exhibition displays work by founding members Kate Coolahan (Map of the Sounds) and the late John Bevan Ford (Pacific Salmon), items from the 1911 homestead that acts as the base for NZ Pacific Studio, a carriage clock from 1892 made by the father in the first family of the homestead, Christopher Burton (1847-1945) who worked with W Littlejohn & Son which installed many of the town clocks across New Zealand and drawings by architect Rosalind Derby (NZ) who oversaw many of the $300,000 renovations necessary to convert the house, garage and cottage into the year-round residency centre.
Over the past 15 years, the five-acre facility at Mount Bruce has hosted hundreds of creative people - writers, musicians, and artists - who develop their personal creative work and also give to the Wairarapa/Tararua community through concerts, workshops, school visits, exhibitions and lectures.
"Right from the start, I imagined NZ Pacific Studio as a community project," Dr Kay Flavell, NZ Pacific Studio Founding Director, 2011-2013, says. "My role was just to provide the initial spark - and all the funds I could find. My model of a 'little house of learning' blended traditions from East and West, inspired by poems of Po Chu'i and Ema Saiko and the monastic lives of St Hilda and St Columba."
"There's something almost magical that happens when artists come into the realm of NZPS and install their creativity in its rooms," Jodie Dalgleish, artist, and former Director/Programme Manager, 2013-2015, currently based in Luxembourg, says. "I've continually seen it and experienced it. Poetry collections, books, plays, films, video artworks, sound art, music, programmes, and exhibitions have all had their genesis, germane development, or completion within the precious space provided by this residency programme.
"As Governments become more and more stretched, the arts falls more and more to a community of patrons, sponsors and workers. There have to be places outside the frame of workaday obligations and the turn of the wheels of the system. Creation requires space."
The exhibition is curated by author-photographer Madeleine Slavick with the assistance of Aratoi Museum and NZ Pacific Studio resident artist Mark Manning. "Art is a living thing," Slavick says. "It needs nourishment. It needs a community. New Zealand Pacific Studio works to provide a space where art - in whatever form - can live, and thrive. It is a sanctuary for artists, located beside the sanctuary for birds, Pukaha Mount Bruce, and we are pleased to be able to show our art in a venue that had once been a church - yet another sanctuary."