Janet de Wagt

An artist’s audit would be expected to have a different slant than a normal business audit but the quest for an independent examination conducted with a view to express an opinion thereof,  remains largely the same.

This artist’s audit consists of close to 100 mini paintings on paper, and records my own personal audit of the landscape from my recent travels.

I have been painting on location in the wilds of Southland and Otago and other places I visit in my work for over 20 years. Spending time in one spot allows for not only the geographical and topical features of a location to be absorbed but also for the more subtle breath and soul of the land to enter ones consciousness. The activities of humans and the elements of wind, rain, sun and fire leave a continually changing mark on the land and the creatures who call it home. Some of these changes are welcome and even yearned for but others are devastating and heartbreaking. These paintings are my attempt to audit the land.

Thanks very much to everyone who supported this latest exhibition at Gallery De Novo, Dunedin!

As with all outdoor sculptures (eg Colac Bay surfer) they require regular upkeep. This is the third time these couches have had a paint up which is an opportunity to have input from present day students in their design, helping to keep them current.

Originally they had an added role as a meet up /  buddy couch. If you were looking for someone new to play with you could sit there and meet up with a like minded student.

I am Artist in Residence at this school – a school I’ve worked with on many creative projects over the years.

These panels were designed to welcome and represent all the students at the school.  They reflect the recent influx of different nationalities brought to Southland for employment opportunities in the rural agricultural sector.

A team of wonderful students researched and painted these panels representing all the different countries they come from.

 

This post was instigated by a wonderful conversation last week with Room 13 International art studios based in Los Angeles.

Bathgate Park School has been part of Room 13 International since 2018.  Room 13 offers a different kind of art education that encourages children to express ideas and feelings through a wide variety of art forms. The relationship between adults and young people is fundamentally one of collaboration with adults acting as guides and facilitators. Each Room 13 worldwide has its own flavour.

At Bathgate Park School Room 13 we use classroom learning as a starting point.  The young people centred learning philosophy of Room 13 that honours individual creativity and understanding influences the way we work.

Resources and materials are integral to any art programme and we are lucky at Bathgate Park School to have many generous donations from the community

The new creative year has started. You can follow us on

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It’s great to be in the Nevis valley and right up to the top. it is the highest public road in Aotearoa and it is amazing!

The road is only open between September and June and you can’t get there at all in the winter months. The amazing rock forms are shaped by the wind and there are 360 degree views of Central Otago.

Thank you to Mark for taking me in with your posh truck and Kay for the super kai.   We sat around and let the landscape in…….

New Zealand music month celebrates New Zealand music and the people who make it.

In tune with the month of New Zealand music I chose to share in this celebration with my exhibition ‘Songs of the Land’. This was at Gallery De Novo, Dunedin in May and at Eastern Southland Gallery in Gore in August.

As an ‘en plein air’ painter I spend many hours in the wilds of Aotearoa and have had the opportunity to observe both the obvious and more subtle sounds of the land, and the creatures who inhabit these places.

I chose to use guitars as my canvas, recognising and honouring their ubiquitous nature in New Zealand music – their portability and adaptability. I also wanted to go underneath into the hidden space of the instrument and use that inner more secret space to reflect the quiet watchfulness and often indifference to us, of much of the natural world and her wild creatures.

This transformation of the guitar into a light mimics the light thrown on these songs of the land. The Kakapo booming for a partner; the lone Ti Kouka clapped by its mates; the gargantuan inhabitants of the deep, the whales and their secret communications; the flight of the bumblebee, so wild and erratic to us watching. And all the time the Toroa / Albatross continues to depart on huge voyages out to sea and then back home, repeating the rhythms and creating patterns over and over again.

They all ask us to listen more closely and carefully to the rhythms and patterns of the earth. This earth itself that makes its own music, its own hum, a constant pulsing note inaudible to the human ear.

This exhibition, curated by Victoria Bell from the Dunedin School of Art and myself, is a culmination of a long tradition of art making at 213 Macandrew Road, the present day site of Bathgate Park School. There are many people who have fueled this tradition over the years.

Art teachers – Lesley Hirst, Pamela Brown, Andrea Evans McCall, Nancy Kaye – to name a few, there were many others. Room 13 with its vision of creativity in a child centred studio was a natural extension of this long tradition. Worldwide each Room 13 studio has its own unique way of doing things and Room 13 at Bathgate Park is no different.

The work we do reflects the make up of the school, our culture and vision. For example these wall hangings are made up of pieces worked by individual children who then come together and use these individual works to make a whole work which is not only a stunning finished art work but also stands as a symbol of the ethos of the school – the spirit of cooperation, collaboration and aroha.

Similarly the grater pictures show the confidence the young artists have to follow their own vision. They all started with a grater but then followed their own imaginations..from the macabre to the gentlest grating of carrot for a waiting bird.

The works on display here are a mere fraction of the works that have been made and in doing so Bathgate Park has won many competitions and awards.

In my time as a working community artist I have worked in thousands of schools all over the world. When finishing a project it usually ends with the children being very disappointed that the project has finished because you leave and go somewhere else. But here at Bathgate Park school we are able to bypass those feelings by having a continuous art project.

This continuity not only grows skills and imagination but also aspirations and confidence in being creative so the children see the possibilities of a future pathway in the creative arts and the need to further their art education in places such as the Dunedin School of Art.

Photos by Pam McKinlay

The New Zealand International Science Festival Nanofest ran from 14 – 17 July 2022 in Dunedin.

The VR Artists’ stage was in the Meridian Mall.

As an artist I am not afraid to try new things, even if it means I’m on public display in the Meridian Mall not really knowing what I’m doing!!

But I really couldn’t get enough of it – it was fun!

Check out the fabulous artwork from some children’s workshops held at the East Gore Art Centre a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of Creative NZ. Two groups of students from St Marys and West Gore School worked with me and fellow artist Jacqui Byars making self portraits in a landscape. The works were based on the paintings of Rita Angus currently showing at the Eastern Southland Gallery. Their creations are on display in the window of the Maruawai Centre opposite the Gallery. Exhibition courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.

The Embassy of the Netherlands in New Zealand has been publishing on their facebook page a series celebrating the local Dutch diaspora as part of a diverse Aotearoa/ New Zealand. This is the story of my family.

Gerrit Sijtze de Wagt

Our New Zealand connection begins with Gerry / Gerrit/ Heit / Dad. He was born in Langezwaad, Friesland on 7 February 1930, the eldest of six children. His first job was hand milking cows but he wanted more and successfully volunteered for the army and went to Netherlands Nieuw Guinea for four years. He loved his time there! At the end of his army service the Netherlands gave him a lump sum and paid for him to go to New Zealand. He arrived in Christchurch on 13 May 1952. In the ensuing years he married his kiwi wife, our mother Mary, and worked in many different jobs. Farm work in Springston, Montalto, Coopers Creek, Oxford and View Hill and for the Ministry of Works doing maintenance on the Rangitata irrigation system. He finally found his niche working for the Prison Service which offered him security, housing and promotion. He was well respected in his job by both staff and prisoners and Heit worked there for the next 31 years. Heit travelled back to the Netherlands seven times and always retained his Friesland ways – hard work and love of the land.

Ode to Heit

A new arrival in New Zealand with a bag and not much English,

A fine drinker of Dutch gin and a lover of Agria and Van Rosa potatoes,

A life member of the Oxford Working Men’s Club and a champion dart player,

A royalist who met the King and Queen of the Netherlands in NZ and made the Dutch news,

A lifelong letter writer to Niesja, his sister and a talker on the phone to his brother in Friesland.

A champion budgie and canary breeder,

An avid reader,

A proud family man,

A Dutch biker, biking to the prison, Cindy his dog waiting for his return,

A clog wearing gardener,

A tea at 5 o’clock kind of guy – the Dutch clock strikes,

A coffee at 10am with a Dutch biscuit,

A man who walked many miles and a planter of many trees,

A long legged man never comfortable in a car or a plane,

A creator of our link to the Netherlands and loved by all the Dutch cousins,

That’s our Gerry, Gerrit, Dad, Heit, Pakke, Clogs, the old bugger,

A man of few words but when he spoke he was worth listening to.

Janet de Wagt

I’m the second eldest in a family of six, born in Ashburton in 1957 and educated at Springston and Templeton Primary schools and Riccarton High school in Christchurch. I then studied Graphic Design at Christchurch Technical Institute and my first job was as a photographer at the Correspondence Institute in Lower Hutt, the starting point for a lifetime’s work in the Arts.

I grew up with the Dutch family on the sideboard, always aware of another world and way of being and as soon as I could I set off to explore the world and meet my Dutch relatives. I felt at home with my fellow long legged cousins and was lucky enough to meet my Dutch grandfather who smoked cigars and consumed gin and spoke very little English. I ended up living and working overseas for 25 years and continued my art practice and have been a self supporting working artist all my life.

I am an award winning artist well known for my landscape paintings, painted on location in all weathers and conditions. My passion is creativity and I am committed to empowering people to find and develop their own. I have worked with thousands of groups of people in many different countries on both large scale and small projects over my working life. I take a broad sweep of the arts, and am always interested in new ideas and challenges and different ways of working.

My latest exhibition ‘Fishy Fakes’ combines my collection of Old Masters’ prints and my passion for painting the South Island coastline and land ‘en plein air’. It also combines Wild Dunedin – New Zealand Festival of Nature and Dutch Week – a Celebration.

The old Masters are concerned with the now and the before, and by reworking them in the Aotearoa New Zealand landscape of today, I have combined these meanings like an exclamation mark highlighting the increasingly complex relationships between the oceans, the land, wildlife and us.

This reworking allows me to use what we already know about these paintings to add another layer of meaning to conservation issues in Te Waipounamu/ the South Island.

I look at this series of works and think of now and before, seeing my ancestors and forbears, even cousins, in the old Dutch paintings and ponder the cultural context that my father embodied when he emigrated to New Zealand.

‘Fishy Fakes’ – Janet de Wagt

23 April – 5 May 2022

Gallery De Novo, 110 Lower Stuart Street, Dunedin 9016

http://www.gallerydenovo.co.nz