Public Seminar Programme Dunedin School of Art

Thursday 25 July  |  Julia Holden 

The Artist 

I will introduce my multi-disciplinary painting practice and outline the different approaches I’ve attempted and why, including some “success/failure” issues encountered with each direction taken. I’ll briefly touch on the Animated Painting process and the inspiration for Performance Painting. I’ll describe the process with examples, such as the on-going series, I’m Your Fan, and the historically referenced audio-visual series, Lyttelton Redux. From there, I’ll introduce The Artist, a new and potentially on-going series I plan to begin with the DSA community. The title “artist” encompasses a full spectrum of occupations (I have a cursory list of 40 kinds of artist, though I am sure there are more), with the intention of honouring the often unseen and undervalued workers at the creative coalface. It feels pertinent to highlight the contribution artists make through their work under this government’s cutbacks and withdrawal of arts funding. Collaborating with an artist, we will identify an object or tool to particularly describe the artist’s individual practice and include this in the Performance Painting portrait. The open invitation is for the artists in the audience, students and/or staff, to volunteer themselves to be the “living canvas” for the new works.

Julia Holden is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist who foregrounds painting in multi-disciplinary projects that track and reflect New Zealand’s developing social history. Holden’s innovative Performance Painting process combines traditional painting with elements of performance, photography, sound and occasionally film. Following a successful career in film and television, Holden gained a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland in 2007, and an MFA from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in 2010. She has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Australia, creating many Performance Paintings in public exhibition spaces, such as City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi and Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua, Whanganui. Holden has been the Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence, Whanganui, and a finalist in many contemporary art awards. Her work is held in public and private collections. 

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Thursday 1 August  |  Aroha Novak 

Collaboration + Context + Whenua 

This kōrero looks at the practice of working site specifically and collaboratively within an Aotearoa New Zealand context in Ōtepoti. Drawing on past public projects, What’s in a name? An unfinished map of Māori placenames (Fringe 2021), The Native Section (SCAPE 2021) and more recently Ngā kohaka (public works at Tunnel Beach 2024), this talk seeks to reflect on tikanga when working collaboratively on projects that draw from the whenua they are on..  

Aroha Novak (Ngāi te Rangi, Ngāti Kahungunu, Tūhoe) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Ōtepoti. Often taking a research and project-based approach, she frequently works outside of traditional gallery spaces collaborating with other artists, experts and communities to draw out indigenous and local histories that have been forgotten or suppressed. Her art practice encompasses mural painting, installation, sculpture, photography, design, writing and curating. Novak graduated from the Dunedin School of Art with an MFA in 2013. She works part time as a Design Lead for Aukaha. 

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Thursday 8 August  |  Eliza Glyn 

Land and Form

Eliza will present images showing the evolution of her paintings, including new works that have not been exhibited.  She will discuss the necessity of inward scrutiny as a practicing artist as well as talking about the processes and techniques used in her paintings. Eliza’s work is made in response to her surroundings and centres on nature and observation. 

Eliza Glyn grew up in Dorset, UK, and studied visual art and contemporary dance and choreography at Bennington College, USA. Her studies and work took her around the globe where these experiences have fed into an extensive painting practice. Glyn’s oil on board paintings feature landforms as abstractions. Forms appear to float within a colour field of rich earth tones. In contrast, her works on paper, mostly studio still lifes, explore a more physical technique of expression in moment-by-moment mark-making that imbues the images with vigour and presence. Glyn has recently begun a series of self-portraits that overlay the faces of formative figures in her life with her own reflected image. Glyn’s work has featured in Art New Zealand and in major art awards including the Cleveland, Hope and Sons and Aspiring Art Award, of which she was a runner up in 2023. She resides with her partner and two daughters in Dunedin and works fulltime from her studio in Port Chalmers. 

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Thursday 15 August | Lynn Taylor 

Mapping, Memory and the Poetics of Place 

This seminar is a series of snapshots from Lynn’s studio practice, community science art projects and residencies—a selection of experiences from her art career (which she describes as navigating uncharted waters), highlighting an interest in mapping, memory and art operating as an agent for change.

Lynn Taylor focuses on nautical and historically-themed artwork through mapping, memory and the poetics of place. She approaches her practice with a “printmaker’s sensibility,” exploring links between ideas and materiality and responding to the graphic surprise of integrating mediums. Teaching/facilitation forms a dual career path, with work in the Schools of Art and Architecture, as a Sci Art researcher and facilitating workshops in the community.

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Thursday 22 August  |  Olivier Jutel 

The Network State, Web3 and the Politics of Exit

Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are fantasising about Exit. Exit is a financial mechanism of cashing-in on an early investment, but it’s also the fantasy of civilisation exit. Special economic zones in the developing world have become staging grounds for experiments in longevity, crypto wealth enclaves and nomad urbanism. It’s a vision that fuses the fetishistic and hyperstitious qualities of web3 and venture capital.

Dr Olivier Jutel is a Communication Studies lecturer at the University of Otago. His work is concerned with the politics of digital media and the developing world.

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Thursday 29 August  |  Locke Unhold 

Residential Drive: Artist Residency at Driving Creek Railroad

Locke has documented his first artist-in-residency experience, taking place at Driving Creek Railroad in Coromandel. This talk will go over the history of Driving Creek, the current opportunities there for artists, and what they can expect from the residency experience.

Locke Jean-Luc Unhold is the technical teacher for the ceramics department as well as a lecturer in the NZDAD Ceramics course. He is currently undertaking his MVA at the Dunedin School of Art.

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Thursday 5 September  |  Rachel Allan 

Just Like the Movies 

Born from a story re-told, a story passed down and a story re-watched, pulled from my archive, Just Like the Movies exists for me both as an episodic memory, a construction and a pilgrimage to an Orca.

Rachel Hope Allan: Dog mother, cat coraller, darkroom alchemist.

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Thursday 12 September  |  Peter Robinson 

Exploring and Drawing: Working Towards Kā Kaihōpara 

Peter Robinson will speak to a slideshow of images which reveal the working processes and development of ideas for the exhibition Kā Kaihōpara. The talk will be informal and followed by time for questions from the audience.

Peter Robinson (Kāi Tahu) has been at the forefront of New Zealand art for over three decades, taking a provocative approach to bicultural issues in the 1990s, representing New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2001, winning the Walters Prize in 2008 for his large-scale polystyrene sculptural installation, ACK, and continually reinventing his art in conceptually acute and materially inventive ways. He graduated from the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts in 1989, and is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Associate Dean - Māori at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. The exhibition Kā Kaihōpara at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery was the outcome of his residency as Aotearoa New Zealand Visiting Artist for 2023.

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Thursday 19 September  |  Monique Redmond 

Social Exchange in Event-Based Practice

[Online seminar via Teams]** 

 I will discuss two social art practice collaborations: Budding vase subscription with Harriet Stockman and Public Share collective. This seminar will explore exchange modalities utilising flowers, ceramics and printed matter as social conduits to engage in reciprocity with assembled publics. In this talk, I will share some exchange-based strategies that underpin our making and distribution focus, particularly the notion of generosity as a material. The possibilities for collective joy and admiration of everyday observances will be considered in the context of slight actions that resonate with materiality and sociality.

Monique Redmond works across installation, temporal and event-based practices, which are formed primarily through social, collaborative, material and photographic processes—focusing on the event as a durational space for everyday gestures of exchange and reciprocity. Collective/solo artworks are commonly published as durational projects (exchange-events), iteratively and ongoing. Monique has been involved in multiple collaborations, including Suburban Floral Association with Tanya Eccleston (2009-2015), and is part of Public Share collective (since 2014). She is an Associate Professor in Toi Ataata Visual Arts at AUT University and completed her PhD, “The Event within Temporary Practices and the Public Social”, in 2019.

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Thursday 26 September  |  Sarah Viault 

The Role of Art in Raising Awareness for Biodiversity 

In this seminar, I will share my personal journey and talk about my main focus: biodiversity. From a young age, I have been deeply connected to nature, with animals being my central interest. Through my work, I show the importance of species and their roles in biodiversity. My projects range from creating posters like Ecological Utopia, which features endangered animals, to paintings with dual meanings revealed under black light, as well as large murals that mainly show animals in a dreamlike setting. My goal is to raise awareness among a broad audience about the critical importance of biodiversity.

Originally from the Paris metropolitan area and a graduate of the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts, Sarah Viault is a traveller at heart, eager for discoveries and enriching encounters. During a four-year journey around the world, she was drawn to the beautiful islands of Tahiti, the final stage of her trip. Since then, she has won the hearts of the Polynesian public with her iconic works. As a multidisciplinary artist, Sarah has made a name for herself with her posters especially, but she also creates tattoos, paintings on canvas and large-scale murals. As an artist and passionate surfer, the wild beauty of the oceans deeply inspires her. This connection with nature influences her art, highlighting endangered animal species in Polynesia. Sarah’s work goes beyond representing endangered animals; she aims to pay tribute to Polynesia’s incredible natural heritage through vibrant artworks that blend colour and light to awaken our senses and environmental awareness.

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*Seminars can also be accessed online via this link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NzU4MDc2MTYtNzM1YS00NTJmLWIzN2UtYTdhN2NmOTI5OTFj%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22450e6824-88ab-4ad2-914d-b0f385da600c%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2248906f9c-eee2-474e-acb8-7720ac92f8fc%22%7d