National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries

A Short History of the Architecture & Planning Library

2013-05-17T15:24:3412:00:00

The origins of the Architecture Library are synonymous with the School of Architecture. In 1926 the first Professor of Architecture, Prof. C. R. Knight, created the beginnings of the Architecture Library. The foundation was laid by making a small collection of his personal books available for the first students to consult as a reference collection. Professor Knight had always been convinced of the value of a library service for architects. His enthusiasm for libraries was made clear in one of his early Studio Programmes in 1929, which reads as follows:

“A gentleman has bequeathed to a University School of Architecture a large collection of books on architectural and related subjects which it is his wish should become a nucleus of a library for the use of students of architecture in particular...".

The total area specified was 4,000 square feet.

Unfortunately it took until 1947, when the School of Architecture moved onto its Symonds Street site, for the Architecture Library to assume its own identity within the University Library system. Ever since then the Architecture Library has been regarded as an integral part of the Schools life and teaching.

1958 saw the commencement of the teaching of the Town Planning course in the Faculty of Architecture, and the consequent addition of planning materials to the Architecture Library.

Now 87 years on from that first small reference collection The Architecture & Planning Library flourishes, and is still viewed as an integral part of the School of Architecture and Planning.

The School of Architecture Library, 1963.

Valerie Richards (nee Lockwood) in the School of Architecture Library, 1963.

Wendy Garvey
Architecture & Planning Librarian

Recent acquisitions at the Fine Arts Library

2013-05-17T13:56:0412:00:00

We have a selection of new books on display in our velvet-lined cabinet.

Britain Creates: Fashion and Art Collusion is a collaborative project that combines the talents of artists and fashion designers. Included in the display is a poster by the New Zealand aritst Francis Upritchard and the designer Peter Pilotto.

Francis Upritchard : a hand of cards ; Alfred Kubin : the other side is another recent addition featuring Upritchard and accompanies an exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary in 2012.

Watermarking / David Bennewith, William Hsu, Marnie Slater ; curated by Melanie Oliver and Laura Preston was made as part of the artists’ collaborative contribution to the 2012 Liverpool Biennial.¹

While The liquid dossier: Nick Austin was created during Austin’s 2012 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago.²

The display also contains a pagework by John Ward Knox in the Bulletin of the Christchurch Art Gallery, issue number 171.

Additional resources:

¹ http://bit.ly/15RvHBp

²http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/hocken/otago042171.html

Melanie Kung
Fine Arts Library

Artists' book tutorial in progress

2013-05-02T10:26:4612:00:00

A group of Elam students are currently exploring our Artists' book collection. They are focusing on materiality, authorship and collaboration.

Fine Arts Library

5th Auckland Triennial

2013-04-30T14:31:2312:00:00

The 5th Auckland Triennial runs from the 10th of May until the 11th of August. Many events will be taking place across the city including exhibitions at The University of Auckland’s Gus Fisher and George Fraser Galleries. This year’s triennial has been curated by renowned Chinese curator Hou Hanru who has invited over 30 New Zealand and international artists to participate. Using the theme If you were to live here….. Hanru has asked artists, collectives and architects to respond to or directly involve the places they inhabit. Locality, public space, creative exchange and sustainability are some of the many ideas being explored.

Past and present Elam students and staff are taking part in the exhibition including Local Time (Danny Butt, Jon Bywater, Alex Monteith, Natalie Robertson), Luke Willis Thompson, both exhibiting at the Auckland Art Gallery. While Peter Robinson exhibits at the Auckland Museum and Tahi Moore at the Gus Fisher Gallery.

Previous Elam Artists-in-Residence, Emory Douglas and Amie Siegel, will also be exhibiting at Fresh Gallery and the Auckland Art Gallery, respectively.

A selection of books and ephemera relating to some of the artists involved in the Triennial will be on display at the Fine Arts Library. If you would like to borrow any of them, please ask at the front desk.

Exhibiting at the Gus Fisher Gallery:

Tahi Moore
Claire Fontaine
Anri Sala

Also on at the Gus Fisher, Elam graduate Rebecca Boswell has curated the exhibition ‘Girl, Empire’ with Jack Hadley, Jacqueline Fraser, Juliet Carpenter & E.R Graham, Victoria Wynne-Jones

Exhibiting at the George Fraser Gallery:

Yangiang Group

Melanie Kung
Fine Arts Library

Tahi Moore

New Journal: ISON

2013-04-17T14:22:1812:00:00

As a follow up to Bryn Roberts' review of the ARC: Student Journal of the Royal College of Art, London, here is the first issue of her own publishing venture ISON. Named after a comet set to blaze a trail through our skies later this year, ISON Issue#1 is concerned with all things 'early2013', here and now. Content includes cultural theory, fashion, visual art, erotic literature and music reviews written by friends and fellow art students. More information can be found at ISONonline.org

Bryn Roberts currently works as a part-time Desk Assistant at the Fine Arts Library.

Presents in the Ruskin Room

2013-04-17T08:22:4912:00:00

A kindly soul has wrapped two of Ruskin's tomes.

Fine Arts Library

Orientalism and the Operatic World

2013-04-12T14:24:4012:00:00

This month's display blog has kindly been contributed by Emeritus Professor Nicholas Tarling who is a specialist in both Asian Studies and Music.

As a historian of Asia and lover of Western opera, I have been trying to bring these two interests together in a project that considers the relevance of ‘Orientalism’ to operas avowedly on ‘Oriental’ subjects.

‘Globalisation’ – with its advantages and disadvantages – has been ill-defined but much discussed. In this project it is seen, not only as a recent process, but as a long-term one. Throughout most of recorded history, though especially in the last five hundred years, contacts and exchanges among peoples of the world have increased and their cultures have been constituted and reconstituted.

The processes have been diverse: peaceful and also the reverse of peaceful. Contacts that have begun by stereotyping or homogenising have given way to, or even been seen to be combined with, interchange and borrowing, even recognition of commonality.

It is in this context that I also see the arguments of Edward Said, in particular those in his influential modern classic Orientalism. ‘Orientalism’, betokening a homogenising and stereotyping and thus dehumanising view of the ‘Other’, has come into common use, and has been influential in the study of literature and the arts as well as other domains.

More rarely has it been applied to ‘Western’ opera. Yet that has been and is a globalised and globalising phenomenon, and as a performance-oriented combination of other arts, it affords unique opportunities for appraising the concept of ‘Orientalism’, particularly in those cases where its concern with the ‘exotic’ focuses on ‘the East’.

Opera’s history extends over most of the past five hundred years during which the world has been subject to ever-increasing globalisation. And opera has also changed over that long period, as its component arts have changed, as their combination has changed, and its role in society has changed. Its capacity to enable comment on ‘Orientalism’ has also changed. Some operas have joined an established repertoire, and the handling of them by successive generations affords opportunity for analysis.

My tentative conclusion is that a study of opera – even of ‘oriental’ operas – does not support the accusation that Europe or ‘the West’ took a stereotyping, homogenising, or dehumanising view of the East, in which, as Said argued, a wish to dominate was at least implicit. Opera in general was and is a humanising art: indeed it could hardly help so being, since it relied and relies on a common, though unique, human attribute, the voice, and was presented by human beings representing other human beings.

Nicholas Tarling
Music and Dance Library

Behind The Brush

2013-04-08T09:35:3012:00:00

The first two episodes of Maori Television's, seven episode series, Behind The Brush are now available to view in Library Search: Episode One and Episode Two.

Behind The Brush focuses on the stories of Māori painted by Gottfried Lindauer, with descendants sharing the lives and legacies of 21 tūpuna. The programme also explores Lindauer's life and emphasises the impact these works have had on New Zealand's historical and artistic landscape. Art historical analysis is provided by Dr Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, from the Centre for Māori and Pacific Development Research at The University of Waikato and Dr Leonard Bell from the Department of Art History, The University of Auckland.

The Auckland Art Gallery holds New Zealand’s most significant collection of Lindauer portraits. These and other works can be discovered at http://www.lindaueronline.co.nz/

More programmes will be added to the catalogue as they are aired. They can also be viewed on the Maori Television website: http://www.maoritelevision.com/tv/shows/behind-brush

Victoria Passau
Fine Arts Library

ARC: Student Journal of the Royal College of Art, London

2013-03-28T07:19:2012:00:00

The relevance of a printed student journal in this undeniably ‘internet’ age is a question I ask of my own endeavours as much as the editorial team who produce each bi-annual issue of ARC.

Revived and renamed after the Ark of the 50s, 60s and 70s, ARC Journal is a well-designed, highly considered and interesting advertisement for the creative capacity of the Royal College of Art. Students write about research, the courses they are involved in, school politics (an email about a missing still life from the drawing studio is published in the front cover of Arc #16), even the journal’s namesake Ark. The articles are ably written without being overly academic but seem much more interested in the world of the Royal College of Art than any wider context. Perhaps that is the function of a journal produced by an institution, to present a community unto itself and allow that conversation to be distributed around the world.

I am in the process of producing what I initially categorised as an ‘Elam journal’ but am now referring to as an ‘art and lifestyle magazine’ for my Honours project. The ARC journals have been a useful resource for my research, helping me clarify my editorial position as one that avoids an institutionally defined sphere-of-influence, and being a benchmark for design and print quality.

The current issues of ARC are held in the new serials reading area. While Ark, can be found in the serial section at the back of the Fine Arts Library.

Bryn Roberts
BFA Hons student
Fine Arts Library Desk Assistant

Elam @ White Night

2013-03-13T09:10:3413:00:00

White Night, part of the Auckland Arts Festival, provides art lovers the chance to explore Auckland City galleries after dark. This year’s White Night is taking place on Saturday 16th of March from 6pm until midnight.

Elam students and graduates are involved in two of this year's projects:

Elam @ the Central City Library: THAT’S FUNNY. Four years of art school hasn’t prepared me for this…

This exhibition utilises the family friendly, public space of the Central City Library to showcase the work of Elam students and alumnae. All three levels of the building will be utilised by artists in various ways, including a mini golf course with University of Auckland branded golf balls, films thanks to The Film Archive, digital haikus, and a native plant installation. This exhibition is curated by recent Elam graduates, Eleanor Cooper and Jack Hadley.

Parlour Complaints Choir

Parlour is a group project run by Kirsten Dryburgh, Harriet Stockman, Vera Mey and Elam alumna Lydia Chai. Their mandate is to provide the arts community with an exciting selection of exhibition spaces and situations.

As part of White Night, Lydia Chai will be leading the Parlour Complaints Choir, performing her original compositions around White Night venues and on the free White Night buses. The lyrics of the songs have been inspired by gripes and complaints from the public, compiled by Parlour.*

Lydia graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2004, and worked as a Library Assistant here at the Fine Arts Library until 2011.

Reference:
*http://parlourgroup.wordpress.com/

Melanie Kung
Fine Arts Library