Renowned NZ artist Judy Darragh coming to Whanganui to give talk on making art while making a living

Prolific New Zealand artist Judy Darragh will share ideas on making art while earning a living. Photo / Sam Hartnett

A well-renowned New Zealand artist will be giving a talk on ways local creatives can make art while also making a living.

Judy Darragh is a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to art, renowned for her brightly coloured sculptural assemblages of found objects, recycled items and industrial materials.

She is also a founding member of Arts Makers Aotearoa (AMA), an advocacy network aiming to raise the standard of support for visual artists and the arts sector as a whole.

The group contributed to the campaign for resale royalties in the secondary market and created the first set of guidelines on artists’ fees in Aotearoa.

Darragh said she was coming to town to share with people the advocacy work the AMA had been doing and to start a conversation on the value of artists and artists’ work.

“There’s this continual undervaluing of what artists do and a lack of understanding in how artists do make a living, which is pretty precarious at the best of times.

“No one pays you to be an artist, the cleaner at the art gallery gets paid but the artist doesn’t get paid to make work so it’s seen as a vocation or some kind of passion project,” she said.

Earlier this year, Creative New Zealand released research results that showed the median income of creative professionals in New Zealand was $37,000 compared with the median of $61,800 for salary and wage earners.

The research also found 44 per cent of creative professionals’ income was supplemented by other work and the median income from creative pursuits alone is $19,500 a year.

The talk, titled Show Me the Money, will have her speak to creatives about ways they can earn more from their work, such as copyrighting their works for future uses or implementing retail royalties for future sales of their work.

“These aren’t large amounts of money but it’s significant in terms of signifying value, because if someone’s getting money they think, ‘oh there’s value in it’, so if artists are seen to be getting money then we’re valued,” she said.

The talk would also advocate for artists to collectivise to talk about these struggles and potential solutions together.

Historically, Whanganui has had a particularly vibrant arts scene, especially in glassworks and ceramics thanks to the Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic, which was disestablished and incorporated into UCOL in 2001.

Darragh said the disestablishment of the polytech was part of another issue in the creative space, with art schools and programmes nationwide closing down.

“That’s a bit of a problem, art schools disappearing because they’re uneconomic because they don’t fit the capitalist model.”

For her, Whanganui had always had a vigorous community of makers, which she found important and radical given economic pressures.

“To me, the most radical thing you can do is keep making work.

“You’re still making it despite the lack of income and you find other ways to keep making work and I think that’s really admirable in creative communities.”

The talk is being held in The Backhouse on Wednesday, August 16, at 5.30pm.

If people want to RSVP for the event, they should email emma.budgen@whanganuiandpartners.nz.

Finn Williams is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in early 2022 and regularly covers stories about business, events and emergencies. He also enjoys writing opinion columns on whatever interests him.