Three Australian artists to present artworks inspired by the Whakatipu Basin
Arrowtown Creative Arts Society (ACAS) will be hosting a Meet The Artist event at the picturesque Giverny Sculpture Garden on Friday. Australian artists Elisabeth Cummings, Wendy McDonald and Pam French will present the work they have created during their three week residency, and talk about their response to our beautiful Whakatipu Basin.
The artists were able to make the journey over here due to the work of the Nock Art Foundation, which was established in 2014 by collector and painter Michael Nock. It’s a non-profit organisation seeking to promote cross-cultural artistic collaboration between international artists. One of the galleries the Nock Foundation has a relationship with is Defiance Gallery in Sydney, which is where McDonald, French and Cummings got involved.
“We organised the residency with Michael,” McDonald says. “He likes to have a group of artists come so they can work together and bounce off each other. We’ve been really interested to learn about natural landscapes and interventions of humans in the landscape, and trying to unravel the story of what it is we’re looking at, which takes some time.”
While Cummings has been to New Zealand before, it’s the first time here for McDonald and French. They have described the landscape here as vastly different to Australia, and have also commented that they’ve been lucky to have such diverse weather in their time here, allowing them to see Queenstown in an array of different lights.
“I have not seen snow like this – when I came before it was summer,” Cummings explains. “Experiencing being surrounded by snow-capped mountains, it’s quite daunting to work out how to cater – we’re not used to this sort of environment. It’s very different, very awe-inspiring and challenging. We’re loving it.”
Since arriving they’ve taken day trips to Glenorchy and Kingston, too, but couldn’t possibly pick a favourite spot for inspiration. One slight hurdle the group have had to overcome is bringing across limited art supplies. They’ve been creating smaller works on paper at each sight, and are excited to take these across home to continue to inspire future works.
“For artists, this has been an amazing platform for us to maybe step out into something else. I think it’s fair to say that we’re often open to different challenges and different possibilities, and that’s why coming here is such an amazing thing for all of us in our art careers,” French says.
McDonald adds that the trio would love to thank Defiance Gallery in Sydney for working with the Nock Foundation and making this opportunity possible.
The ACAS Meet The Artist event will be at Giverny Sculpture Garden, 78 Lower Shotover Road from 5:30pm Friday 20 September. Tickets are $25 per person with a limited number available – bookings are required by emailing info@acas.nz. You can head to acas.nz to join or for more information on upcoming events. Each of the artists have their own websites and social pages, which you can find by doing a quick Google search to see their work.
