Here Magazine’s Simon Farrell-Green 2025 will deliver the Bill Millbank Memorial Lecture.
Sarjeant Happenings
A highlight in Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery’s event calendar is the annual lecture series held in honour of former director, Bill Milbank, known as the Bill Milbank Memorial Lecture.
Taking place on November 8, exactly a year after the gallery opened, this year’s keynote address will be about the changing world of magazine publishing and is presented by Simon Farrell-Green, editor of architectural magazine, Here.
This follows last year’s memorable inaugural Bill Milbank Memorial Lecture by architectural historian, Deidre Brown, which is now available to view on the Sarjeant Gallery website.
Milbank was the director of the Sarjeant Gallery from 1978-2006, having started at the gallery a few years earlier under the first professional director, Gordon H. Brown.
Milbank died in November 2023, a year before his beloved gallery reopened after the substantial redevelopment that he initiated in the 1990s.
The Bill Milbank Memorial Lecture series serves as a living memorial to Milbank, through which we can gather and celebrate his legacy with an exploration of his wide-ranging interests, not just in the visual arts but also across music, architecture, design and magazine publishing, and especially magazines about music, architecture and design.
Each lecture is developed in response to these themes and in collaboration with Milbank’s family.
Sarjeant Gallery staff remember a magazine shop on Victoria Ave that Milbank would frequently buy from.
Some were magazines for the gallery library but also lots of undisciplined purchasing of titles that just piqued his interest.
He would come back from lunch breaks with armloads.
This year’s lecture celebrates the exciting world of magazines, whether they’re major titles with free CDs or small-run, bespoke zines, perhaps full of glossy images or sumptuous, long-form editorial features, but all produced as a labour of love under the constant pressure of publishing deadlines.
Farrell-Green is no stranger to the precarious, month-to-month existence of magazines and was previously editor of Home, which has been operating in various forms since 1936.
During Covid-19, when major publishers were shutting down all their titles and his employer, Aotearoa’s largest magazine publisher, closed overnight, he and a cohort of professionals got together to independently start Here to ensure this niche wasn’t lost.
This year Here celebrated five years in business and has now published 32 issues.
By starting anew, he says he was also able to shake off all the residue of what came with previously editing a well-established magazine and begin with a clean slate.
This fits with the spirit of Bill’s “let’s try it, see how it goes and trust in the process” approach to things and is a celebration of what it means to be here in Aotearoa New Zealand, as a survivor, a disruptor and an innovator.
“Survivor, disruptor, innovator; three words which also aptly describe Bill,” Bill’s partner Raewyne Johnson said.
“Bill tended to bring his mountains of magazines into the house discreetly, imagining his budget-challenging purchases would go unnoticed.
“I have often thought that magazines must have been the ideal format for a dyslexic person. The blessed relief of visual imagery that he happened to be so good at interpreting and understanding. Reading was always difficult.”
Reflecting on his invitation to deliver the 2025 lecture, Farrell-Green said: “I’m honoured, and not a little flattered, to have been invited to present the Bill Milbank Memorial Lecture for 2025.
“Bill was an absolute polymath and a visionary who foresaw the incredible institution that the Sarjeant could become.
“I’m told he liked magazines and architecture almost as much as he liked art, and I suspect he would have liked Here – so I hope my lecture fulfils the spirit of his generous nature and inquiring mind.
“I have a real soft spot for Whanganui and Te Whare o Rehua too, so I’m very much looking forward to visiting again.”
Doors open for this year’s lecture at 6pm on Saturday, November 8, with the Sarjeant Gallery cafe open for refreshments before and after.
The lecture is generously sponsored by Murray and Denise Lazelle, which enables the gallery to film the event for future use.
Tickets to the Bill Milbank Memorial Lecture can be purchased from the gallery or the gallery website, www.sarjeant.org.nz.