Art has many aspects. It can be a process for individual creative expression or a way of connecting and empowering communities. For Simone Anderson, founder and director of The Incubator, the experience of facilitating community art projects initiated a paradigm shift.
WHAT MADE YOU CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE ART?
The pivotal change for me as a practising artist started in late 2010 with a phone call from my sister, Cherie. At the time she was teaching at Karetu School, a tiny school in Northland. She asked me to come and do a project with the kids: they were designing a backdrop for a Christmas play, which then got repurposed for their Christmas float for the Kawakawa Christmas parade.
The late artist, architect and environmentalist Friedensreich Hundertwasser had lived only four kilometres from that school and the kids had grown up knowing who Hundertwasser was. He died in 2000 but had made this Northland piece of paradise his home for the last decades of his life, so he was a local eccentric personality whom everybody knew.
Karetu School was environmentally minded, so the design was inspired by the kids’ natural environment and Hundertwasser’s style of art. It was painted on a roll of building paper, which was then wrapped around a truck. My sister found this idea so cool she entered the design in the Keep New Zealand Beautiful Mural competition. It won a Wall Worthy award in the Northern Island category. The prize was the funding and sponsorship to recreate the mural onto a permanent site.
WAS WINNING THIS AWARD THE KEY MOMENT FOR YOU?
This was great, but the actual paradigm shift happened a year later when the school was preparing for a one-week school trip to Sydney. Most of the kids were set to go, but some couldn’t participate for financial reasons. Cherie felt sad for them and said to me, ‘Why don’t you come up again and we’ll do this mural [on the permanent site]. We have seven days to produce it and it would be an equally cool project for those kids who can’t go to Sydney.’
For me this was both exciting and a real challenge because I wanted these guys to love the project. It had to be much better than going to Sydney!
HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT PLANNING AND REALISING THIS HUGE MURAL?
We were given a side of the Grass Hut gallery, right opposite the Kawakawa Hundertwasser toilets. We had to scale up the mural and design it to fit onto that space, so in preparation, I was directing a whole team of dads and grandparents from home, as well as local potters and ceramicists as I wanted to include glass and ceramics into the project.
During this time, the team organised workshops with the children to manufacture the embellishments, including ceramic leaves and eyes with embedded glass beads, wooden ornaments and metal leaves made from copper. When I arrived, all the embellishments were ready to go.
WHAT DID THE HANDS-ON PROCESS LOOK LIKE?
We used two classrooms to lay out 10 metres of primed plywood, which became a daunting, blank ‘canvas’ for drawing the design. It was absolutely terrifying for me to transfer the design from the building paper. I had never done a mural before and bore the responsibility to deliver this piece of art in Kawakawa opposite the famous Hundertwasser toilets, of all things.
But it turned out to be the most powerful experience. We ended up working with all the teachers who had remained at school, the principal’s family, the children’s grandparents, elderly neighbours of the school, aunts, uncles, little cuzzies and even a dog whose paw prints were left on one of the panels. Word got round in the community and people would bring bacon-and-egg pies and fish and chips for everyone. The principal would shout cold beers at five o’clock when we were all still working and in the flow.
It was so amazing to see the transformation of these kids as the mural started to take shape. Towards the end we needed more help because the concrete wall had to be framed up to attach the artwork and a whole group of dads and granddads took on the task. Finally, the pieces were mounted. This was on a Friday. Watching people’s faces as this was happening was incredible. It was not just about the beautiful art; it was about the fact that they had done this. I still get goosebumps when I talk about it.
WAS THERE A KEY MOMENT THAT MARKED A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN YOUR THINKING ABOUT ART?
The most amazing thing for me happened when the last panel was being put up on the wall. One of the Karetu boys looked up, hands in his pockets, shook his head and said: ‘I thought only rich schools did stuff like this, Miss.’ It made me feel sad, and at the same time something inside me clicked. I realised that this was the effect art can have on someone, and that this kind of experiential outcome of creating should be accessible to everybody because it changes people’s lives.
This tiny school was also changed as a result and became widely known. The mural was on Instagram and Facebook posts all over the world. It’s on Facebook videos in languages we don’t even understand. There were documentaries made about it and it’s frequently used as a backdrop for local TV news coverage and on DHB Northland brochures.
It has also created a huge sense of ownership for the locals of Kawakawa. On the mural are handprints of every single kid in the school and even of little toddlers, brothers and sisters. They’re from kids who are now at high school, but the mural is still there.
HOW DID THE WIDER COMMUNITY REACT TO THIS UNUSUAL PIECE OF ART?
At the reveal the community set up gazebos and sausage sizzles and invited everybody in town. The mural was blessed, followed by waiata from the children, an explanation of how the mural had come about, and a haka. The whole school, even the students back from Sydney, was incredibly proud. The schoolboys’ haka was like a challenge, saying: ‘This is our mural. You were given it, but now you have to look after it.’ I think there was concern about graffiti, but there hasn’t been any. It is revered and has so much meaning for the community. There is so much in it that relates to their own people. It’s their taonga.
The whole project triggered a paradigm shift for me. It showed me what the power of art can do when it is available for people to participate in. And it opened to me the value of experiential art rather than just paintings that go up on a wall; paintings that one buys as a commodity.
THE KARETU SCHOOL MURAL WAS ONLY THE START. WHAT CAME NEXT?
Since then I have been involved in another three huge projects. In 2013 I did the mural for Tauriko School, and in 2017 for the Welcome Bay Community Centre. But the one that had a huge practical outcome was the Hundertwasser mural in Whangarei.
WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THAT ONE?
It was really exciting and shows how small and interconnected New Zealand is. In 2015 I was contacted by a couple from Whangarei who wanted to get the Hundertwasser Art Centre in the Whangarei Basin up and running. It is now nearly finished.
Back in 1993 the mayor of Whangarei invited Hundertwasser to design an art centre for the city. He submitted plans but was so far ahead of his time that his plans were way too controversial. Who would want a weird looking building with a turf roof and recycled bottles embedded in the walls? The idea was poo-pooed and rejected.
His reaction was to suggest building a toilet block in Kawakawa instead and he would design it. The irony is that this toilet block is now one of the biggest pilgrimage destinations for people from the whole world: architects, designers, photographers, painters and tourists go there by the busload. It put Kawakawa on the map, and the community has benefited economically from this. It was kind of Hundertwasser’s way of giving those people in Whangarei the finger. The design for the art centre was probably worth millions, but elected members were too close-minded and conservative back then to see any value in it.
HOW DID THE PROJECT GET THE GREEN LIGHT IN THE END?
It sat dormant until a group of people in Whangarei decided to develop the town basin. They said: ‘Why don’t we pull these plans out again. They were gifted to us. Their time has finally come.’ But the council and elected members were deeply divided. Finally, it came to a public referendum on the Hundertwasser Art Centre.
A huge group of people who wanted the project to go ahead started a grassroots campaign and activated the community. It was an art attack. People painted their letterboxes in Hundertwasser style and schools made Hundertwasser murals. I had been avidly following progress, so when I got that call from Whangarei I knew the cause was so great I could not say no. The couple had seen my mural in Kawakawa and wanted me to do something similar: a visual declaration that the people wanted this arts centre to happen.
HOW WAS THIS COMMUNITY MURAL DIFFERENT FROM THE KAWAKAWA PROJECT?
It was political and it all happened in a subversive way. We worked in a council-owned building that was not being used, making this mural whose progress we could not show on social media because it was a clandestine operation. The huge, 8.4m-long mural features a call to action: Whangarei, dare to dream! Dare to be different!
It celebrates Hundertwasser and his style and is highly embellished with mirrors, ceramics, plywood cut-outs, pieces of copper and even gold leaf. The mural went up on a big wall of a fitness centre close to where the art centre is now being built. I worked with three other artists and other people who came in over the week to help. Finally the mural was installed as a show of support. And obviously, luckily, the referendum ended with a Yes, so it had been worth the effort.
I am so excited about the art centre. Having faith in the arts is going to change Whangarei. It will be a huge point of difference for the city and will make it a destination.
WHEN AND WHY DID YOU GIVE UP CREATING YOUR OWN ART?
When doing the Welcome Bay mural I was still working on my own art, but these new insights were coming more and more to the surface: the impact of art on the community, the importance of maximum involvement. It had become clear to me that facilitating art for and with the community was what I really wanted to pursue. The Incubator’s time had come.