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Sunday, November 14, 2010

SLANZA 10 year anniversary

My good friend Pauline McCowan has always kept in touch with me since our days on the Steering Committee for the School Library Association of New Zealand and when I'm in Auckland we usually meet. This time it just happened to be the SLANZA 10th anniversary and Pauline invited me to come along to the celebrations at the Stanley Street headquarters of National Library, Auckland. It was a happy occasion with speeches by Elizabeth and the past & present SLANZA presidents. Graeme Beattie captured the attention of the audience when he spoke about how he came to love books and his career.
It was great to catch up with Pauline and five others of the old crew... from left to right: Jill Stotter, me, Pamela Hulston, Liz Probert, Pauline and Elizabeth Jones.

Cultural Icons at Depot Artspace, Devonport

On the 3rd November, 2010 Alan was interviewed by Denys Trussell for the Depot's "Cultural Icons" series (see www.depotartspace.co.nz/). They have interviewed about three score artists/writers/musicians and others generally involved, over a long period of time, in the cultural life of New Zealand.
During the filming I was sitting in the sound engineer's room with Emma, Barry Brickell and the sound engineer for Depot Sound, Mark Howden. Barry was writing, Emma was checking up on things, I was borrowing Emma's Macbook to book tickets south and to catch up on a vast amount of work which happily I did during the two hour interview. Mark was browsing through the portrait book as he twiddled the knobs making necessary adjustments. Suddenly he said, "how come I've never heard of this artist? I did art history at university. This is some of the best painting I've ever seen".
How come indeed!

Rodney's response


MAGNIFICENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Al and Alan – the book is incredible! It confirms everything I knew about Alan 30 to 40 years ago, but the body of work exceeds anything I knew or could have anticipated. Alan is not just the greatest portraitist this country has known, but he is a stand out talent internationally. And the production quality, scope etc is tremendous. Well done Alan on a life incredibly well spent, and Al on achieving such a magnificent record. 
Rodney 
Dr T.L.Rodney Wilson  CNZM, former director Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland Art Gallery & Robert McDougall Art Gallery. www.rodney-wilson.com