Real Art Roadshow
GBHS photography teacher April Stevens pointing out an interesting exhibit at the Real Art Roadshow to Jack Dixon. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
It was Collingwood Area School’s turn to host the Real Art Roadshow on Thursday 2 June.
The entire school plus more than a few locals took the opportunity to view the 63 significant artworks in the 80 square metre, fold-out articulated truck unit, which parked in the bus bay just outside the school grounds.
GBHS photography and art students also came to have a look. The mobile gallery is one of two such travelling shows currently touring high schools up and down the country. This one, the “Silver Collection”, features sculpture, paintings, photography and printmaking, and will tour 96 South Island schools this year alone. Its diverse exhibits feature Waskaseka, a carved perspex and fibre necklace by Chris Charteris, Hey Mum, an oil picture on an antique film folder by Richard McWhannell, and Dead Set 2, a superbly mounted collection of bird bills and feet by Warwick Freeman.
CAS art teacher Elda Heyward said it was a marvellous opportunity for students to see original works of such quality.
“You can just tell by watching the kids go around that they were really impressed by the quality works on display, the intricacy of the smaller ones and the impact of the large works. It was very special to have this offered in Collingwood.”
The Real Art Roadshow was the brainchild of Fiona Campbell, Rob McLeod and Gerald Barnett, three visionary art curators who had the idea of taking real art to school students in geographically isolated or challenging locations throughout New Zealand. Prior to the Roadshow, many of these students had only encountered NZ art through textbooks and web images. Realising it was not always possible to bring students to the art, the team had a “eureka moment” and decided to take the art to the students. Fiona put her money where her mouth was and bankrolled the whole setup with her shares from TradeMe, in which she had been involved from its early days.
“I could have brought lipstick, but I decided to do something worthwhile with the money,” she said in a TV interview in 2008.
The show remains free to students and schools, and is run as a non-profit making trust, relying on the generosity of others to keep it trucking.
Accompanying Fiona and the show to CAS was her husband, “Possum” Heward, who drives the massive Western Star 4964 heavily chromed truck that pulls the Roadshow, and which attracts its own fair share of boy (and big boy) interest too. The whole Roadshow takes two hours to unfold and pack down again at each location. A small but well-equipped flat in the front of the trailer acts as accommodation for the duo. Fiona says the two collections, purchased from artists and dealers alike, now represent the best accessible private art collection in the country.
“We have to throw a few hundred thousand dollars at it a year to keep it all on the road, but we are attracting some sponsorship now, which does help. I’d like to think the Roadshows offer a non-intimidating approach to art, which is why students always seem to enjoy it.”
And enjoy it the students did. One CAS junior, Nathan Feron, was awed by the mobile gallery.
“It was so cool. I just wanted to live in that truck forever.”
Gerard Hindmarsh
