Creative Connections

Welcome to episode 155, the final episode of 2024. Ngā mihi nui Thank you so much for listening and for your support this year. I hope the podcast has cheered you up, motivated you, inspired you, affirmed what you do or educated you in some small way. As you probably know, the CM podcast is largely self funded. However, I now have a way for you to show your support if you'd like to, by making...

Established in 1974 by a group of young jewellery makers to promote their work, Fingers has become synonymous with innovation and originality and the development of an indigenous style of contemporary New Zealand jewellery.  Fingers has been at the forefront of treating and displaying the craft object as art, and has constantly challenged the notion of what is precious. As the oldest contemporary...

Bailee Lobb is a queer, disabled artist born in Whanganui, Aotearoa, 1989 and now based in Wellington. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with textiles, colour, and movement to create sculpture, installation, and performance artworks that explore art as disability access and care. In this enlightening episode Bailee talks about how she felt as a teenager, as a person who was dealing with...

Julie Battisti is a painter who grew up in Melbourne Australia and moved to Aotearoa New Zealand with her husband in 2017, settling first in Rawene in the North Island then going on to make Dunedin her home. Julie's paintings currently have two significant themes; clouds and flowers. Both are studies of light and texture.  In this episode Julie shares how she sources and chooses the flowers s...

Chris Melville is a photographer, graphic designer and jazz musician living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.  In his latest photographic collection, Chris uses household items and a slow shutter speed to create landscape compositions, suggesting dreamy lakes or mountains appearing from the mist. Chris currently works with linen, denim, smooth cotton and coarse hessian, creating visual layers and text...

Ross Jones is a painter creating works that evoke a heady sense of nostalgia and elevated playfulness, living in Snells Beach on the east coast north of Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Each meticulously devised painting offers hints at various narratives as the artist invites the viewer to engage with his role as storyteller. I loved meeting Ross and chatting to him. We talk about Ōtaki on the Kapiti C...

Cathy Carter is a photographic and multimedia conceptual artist, living in Grey Lynn, Auckland.  Cathy's art is inspired by concerns about climate change and our evolving relationship with bodies of water as physical, cultural, and unique environmental ‘landscapes’ and investigates our complex psychological relationship to water through different perspectives and geographical locations. Cathy...

Jeff Thomson is a sculptor living in the little suburb of Helensville, in the north west of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is well known for his corrugated iron animals, birds, cars and people as well as NZ icons like the Taihape gumboot and the Holden in our national Museum Te Papa, and is often referred to as the corrugated iron man of Australasia. Unconventional, humorous, challenging, iconic and...

Emma Hercus is a painter born in Hastings and now living in Plimmerton, just north of Wellington. The everchanging ocean and its view from her home serve as constant reference points in Emma's narrative abstract figurative paintings. I loved talking to Emma. We talk about her early influences and inspiration from family as she was growing up, the amazing basketry and weaving practice she deve...

Today I'm catching up with painter, printmaker Kylie Rusk to see what she's been up to since I last spoke to her in March 2021. Listen to Kylie's first chat on the podcast in episode 2: https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-on-air-with-kylie-rusk You can see her work at her upcoming group show ELEMENTS at Turua Gallery October 18th - 30th 2024 https://turuagallery....

Gilly Sheffield is a sculptor | weaver living in both Glendowie in Auckland and Wanaka in the South Island.  After a lifetime of making, it was only a few years ago that Gilly developed a more specific art practice using corrugated iron and started to see herself as an artist.  In this episode Gilly shares how she came upon this very iconic NZ material, corrugated iron, how she sources it (with he...

Creative visual thinking is fundamental to us all as human beings as we strive to understand our sense of self and the world. Chartwell seeks to deepen understanding about the importance of art and creative thinking for our future and our wellbeing.  The Chartwell Trust was set up in the early 1970s by Robert Gardiner, then a Hamilton businessman and accountant, as a charitable trust to realise Ch...

Levi Hawken is a brutalist | modernist sculptor living and working in west Auckland. His practice includes sculpture in concrete, glass, wood and bronze as well as painting. As a skateboarder, Levi understands the undeniable attraction of the urban concrete landscape. His work responds to the forms and elements of this environment. In this very authentic conversation Levi takes us through his extr...

Di Tocker is a sculptural glass artist living and working from her purpose built studio in Cambridge, in the Waikato. Di maintains a structured approach to her art practice and business. She provides work for 5 galleries throughout New Zealand, and undertakes commissions for private residences and commercial projects. Di loves to connect with people who enjoy her glass work and welcomes visitors t...

Ronja Schipper has been lovingly making up-cycled art objects since 2015. She lives in the Waitakere Ranges in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Ronja uses waste materials for creating design pieces, aiming to highlight the relationship with our at-risk environment & its resources. All pieces are hand made in NZ from discarded bike innertube, cleaned, polished & enhanced with new findings. Ronja...

Mandy Patmore is a multi-media environmental artist living in Karekare, on Auckland’s west coast.  Primarily a painter, Mandy's current work focuses largely on deforestation and habitat loss in New Zealand, and the plight of many endangered native species, whilst exploring themes of colonisation and human impact on our landscape. I find the work Mandy does in the community, with the environme...

Born and raised in Auckland, Dita Angeles completed her BFA at Whitecliffe College in 2004 before spending the majority of her career in Asia and more recently Australia. With a strong background in portraiture - social presentation, perception and persuasion are the dominant themes that run through Dita's work.  Her paintings are inspired by existential philosophies and 20th century aestheti...

Leigh Tawharu, is a contemporary mixed media and printmaking artist living in Kaeo, Te Tai Tokerau in the far north of Aotearoa NZ. Her work is created through various techniques and mediums which seek to explore surface texture, pattern and design on paper. She is influenced and inspired by her surrounding landscape of maunga (mountains), native bush, fashion, textiles and still life from within...

Sam Leitch is a contemporary painter and print maker living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Sam sees himself as a storyteller of everyday life and the unknown, capturing time and combining commonplace objects and surrealist expressions to invite the viewer in to the painting. He has always been fascinated with what makes a piece of art. The connection between the viewer, the artist and the piece is a...

GUEST UPDATE: Textile artist Frankie Meaden was last interviewed on the podcast in July 2023 in episode 87. Today we catch up with her to hear about what she has been up to since then - including a residency, her first solo show, a group show at Turua Gallery coming up and the creation of new works. She was also involved in and a finalist in the Changing Thread’s Contemporary Textile and Fibre art...

Agate Rubene, aka Restless & Infectious, is an artist and illustrator with a background in fashion and graphic design. She is from Latvia and now lives in Wānaka in the South Island of NZ. Agate’s work focuses on people and their actions, capturing emotions and feelings. She is inspired by the people around her, human interactions and patterns in nature. Agate loves using bright flat colours t...

Jennie De Groot is a contemporary painter living near Hamilton in the Waikato.  Jennie's  oil paintings occupy a space where reality, imagination and memory all hold equal tenancy. These psychological landscapes hold the tension between realism and abstraction, place and non-place. Her status as immigrant informs her work, exploring themes of identity and adaptation. After studying archeology...

Alice Fennessy is an artist based in Palmerston North in the Manawatu. She uses drawing to convey themes such as intimacy, domestic life and interior worlds.  Her work is currently intertwined with motherhood as she raises her two young children, dreams and memories. Alice is endlessly fascinated by the juxtapositions or dualities thrown up by pregnancy and motherhood, how these experiences can be...

Artist Rosanna Raymond aka Sistar S’pacific is in her words an "activator, fabricator" who has achieved international renown for her performances, installations, body adornment, and spoken word. Rosanna is an innovator of the Pacific art scene and notable producer of and commentator on contemporary Moana culture in Aotearoa New Zealand, the U.K, Canada, Australia and the USA.She is a lon...

Georgina is a painter living in Nelson in Te Waipounamu, the South Island of NZ.  Informed by her print & pattern textile design background, Georgie develops distinctive, warm and earthy colour palettes and paints with broad expressive brushstrokes. Her work is primarily semi-abstracted landscapes, still lifes and portraits. I loved meeting Georgie. We have a cool chat about how she came to be...