Sarjeant Happenings: Artist Andrew Drummond hails former director Bill Milbank's 'unusual attribute'

Former Sarjeant Gallery director Bill Milbank (left) and artist Andrew Drummond. Photo / Supplied

The support of former Sarjeant Gallery director Bill Milbank for many artists has been beneficial both for the gallery's collection and for the artists.

Under his watch, the Sarjeant acquired many significant artworks and built enduring relationships with established and emerging artists.

Leading New Zealand-based sculptor Andrew Drummond, also known as a pioneer in New Zealand performance and installation art, was the second Tylee Cottage artist in residence in 1987. Like the other early Tylee residents, he stayed for a year and enjoyed his interactions with the community.

Drummond has paid tribute to Milbank's style of directorship, which he says was unusual for the times.

"Bill took a very different line than other directors; it was organic and responsive to one's needs. [An] important aspect was Bill's ability to get to the centre of things, and allow for one to feel both independent but gently wrapped to avoid the hard falls. A very unusual attribute in a gallery director," Drummond said.

The two men first met in 1977 when Milbank was a technician at the gallery. Then in 1980 Milbank, having succeeded Gordon Brown as director, organised an exhibition of four artists' works that included Drummond along with Matt Pine, Pauline Rhodes and Neil Dawson. Milbank and the Friends of the Gallery, assisted by PEP (Public Employment Programme) workers, put together a fundraising festival in Queen's Park, which attracted more than 3000 people over one weekend.

Milbank had commissioned Drummond to produce an artwork that responded to the architecture of the gallery.

Entitled "Eight Decades", the work involved eight niches around the outside of the building in which Drummond stretched hides. He walked around the gallery dragging a willow branch strung with water bags, which he threw at the skins, marked with a sheep farmer's red raddle. The chalk bled down the building when hit with the water. The Sarjeant acquired 11 drawings relating to the performance, along with other memorabilia and photographs.

The performance was very successful and attracted "hordes of children" among a large audience, Milbank said.

The work was constructed around a series of materials: a huge site; the building's cross structure and niches; the stripped, white, bone-like willow, an introduced species he has used frequently along with his depersonalised white boiler suit. All these contained "notions" from which different interpretations and stories could be garnered, Drummond said.

"Certainly the journey around the building could provide many meanings. The Eight Decades of Conflict title could be from any time. I was a vehicle. The skins had been used for a period of years ... they were about the killing machine, the RED raddle used on every farm, repurposed, the bags of water to wet the raddle and start the process; no religion."

He was also aware of the death of the Sarjeant's young architect, Donald Hosie, in World War 1, nearly 80 years prior at the time.

Laurence Aberhart's colour photograph of Andrew Drummond's 'Coming and Going' dome installation at Sarjeant Gallery, 1988. Collection of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui.

"Andrew's work is a mixture," Milbank said.

"On the one hand, it's conceptual and confronting - he was a strong critic of what institutions and people in the arts were doing generally. And then on the other hand he's made other wonderful pieces of sculpture. It's sculpture in its own right and stands on its own feet without being a strong political, or social-political, statement. I continued to have quite a lot to do with Andrew after that engagement."

Milbank was also best man when Drummond's marriage to Darina became the first wedding celebrated in the gallery.

The Sarjeant has both acquired, and been gifted by the artist, fine examples of his works that include sculptures such as Vessel and Container, Wood Cutter's Stack and others, which can be viewed online via the gallery's online collection portal Explore the Collection. A photograph by Laurence Aberhart of Drummond's dome installation Coming and Going, exhibited in 1988, can also be seen.

Grateful for Milbank's support, Drummond said, "it really did enable me to continue to work full-time, both in Whanganui and for the following decade. The purchase of work, and the beginning of substantial dealer connections, were significant in my career as a artist."