ILAM 2020
Featuring works drawn exclusively from 3rd, 4th, HONs and MFA studio-artists, ILAM 2020 was a curated snapshot of contemporary creative developments within the Ilam School of Fine Arts. The open studio exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive publication providing both written and visual representation of all participating student-artists.
Leo Bensemann: Illustrator, Designer and Printer
Curated by Peter Vangioni
A key figure in Christchurch’s cultural life from the 1930s to the 1980s, Leo Bensemann was an exceptional graphic artist, designer and a demon with the letterpress printing technology associated with his era. Throughout the mid-20th century Bensemann, Denis Glover and others working at the Caxton Press were instrumental in introducing modern typographical design and typefaces to New Zealand’s printed culture. The exhibition included a wide selection of Leo’s original drawings, wood engravings, book designs and letterpress printing. Leo Bensemann: illustrator, designer and printer highlights and acknowledges the Bensemann Family’s recent gifts of Leo’s work to the Macmillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū Library.
Peter Vangioni is a curator at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and a letterpress printer running his own studio, The Kowhai Press. He has long been interested in Leo Bensemann’s work as a painter but more importantly as a graphic artist, book designer and letterpress printer. In 2013 Peter curated A Caxton Miscellany: The Caxton press 1933 – 1958 for Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Christchurch City Libraries.
Barry Cleavin | Mitigating Factors
Internationally recognised as a master of the printmaking craft, Barry Cleavin is regarded by many as New Zealand’s most important and influential printmaker. For Mitigating Factors, Cleavin welded past and present graphic facts and fictions that may indicate something of his approach to attaining 80 years of age. In all, the exhibition was a synopsis of a life lived between 1939 and 2020.
Born in Dunedin in 1939, Barry Cleavin received an Honours in Painting from Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury in 1966 and in 1972 won an Arts Council scholarship to study with Gabor Peterdi (Professor of Printmaking at Yale University) and James Koga (Master Printer at the Honolulu Academy of Arts). He was senior lecturer in Printmaking at Ilam School of Fine Arts from 1978 to 1990 and in 1983 won a Fulbright fellowship to work at the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico.
Barry Cleavin was awarded the ONZM in 2000 and an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Canterbury in 2005. He currently lives and works in Portobello, Dunedin.
Kim Lowe | The Silence of the Brush
The Silence of the Brush was an exhibition of brushwork made by Kim Lowe during her Olivia Spencer Bower Award year. Kim Lowe completed a Masters in Fine Arts (Printmaking) with distinction from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 2009. Since graduating she has been involved in and helped instigate many community projects including: Toi Te Karoro-Art New Brighton; Shared Lines Sendai-Christchurch Art Exchange; International print exchanges Thinking of Place I, II and III; AChA and Aotearoa Asian Artist Hui - AAAHui18.
Track and Trace
For the newly refurbished Ilam Campus Gallery, Aaron Kreisler curated a grouping of artworks by selected Ilam School of Fine Arts staff. Rather than seeking out the latest offerings from these artists, this exhibition showcases artworks that existed on proof sheets, archives, as digital files or as suites of works that have been separated out since their original production.
The re-evaluation and rematerialisation of these works, by Louise Palmer, Tim Veling, Robin Neate and John Chrisstoffels, provide an opportunity to consider how artworks can shift over time in how they operate, can be experienced and what they say to contemporary audiences - the old and new may not be as distinctly different from one another as we are sometimes told and led to believe.
