Heritage NZ – an advocate for our heritage fabric
Historic Places Act 1993.
At an everyday level all local authorities have a duty to protect heritage fabric through each and every City Plan or District Plan. Heritage New Zealand frequently becomes involved in the writing and administration of such plans, bearing out the thrust from central government to convert the Historic Places Trust from a string of regional branches comprising local enthusiasts, to a centralised and more professional body.
One question emerges – does the new body have the funding and resources to replace all of that grassroots energy and knowledge?
Andrew Coleman
(pictured), chief executive of Heritage New Zealand, will touch upon these and other issues at a public forum in Timaru next Thursday, July 25, at the Landing Service Building at 7pm. Everyone is welcome. – David McBride A small case in the All Creatures Great and Small exhibition at the South Canterbury Museum highlights the unseen world that exists in small forest reserves in our region.
The case contains 96 beetles, representing the more than 200 species of native beetle that have been recorded at Claremont Bush, a small reserve on the south face of Mt Horrible, 10 kilometres west of Timaru. This patch of forest contains a range of native trees, including matai and totara, creating an environment that is a home for hundreds of species of native plants and animals.
The beetle study, conducted by a museum staff member over several years, has revealed a number of beetle species that do not occur outside of the forest environment. These include wood borers, scavengers and others that depend upon the flow of nutrients through the food chain of a native forest. Most are tiny, between one and 10 millimetres in length, although a few exceed 20 millimetres, including the well-known huhu beetle, which bores into rotten logs.
At least four species are only known from South Canterbury, and several others are only recorded from a few sites around New Zealand. Surprisingly, a number of these forest dwellers can occur in suburban gardens in Timaru if the habitat is favourable.
Only a couple of introduced species seem to have penetrated the native forest environment. The beetles collected during this study will act as a benchmark for future studies, allowing researchers to note changes over time. Vivian Lynn (1931-2018) is a crucial figure in the history of New Zealand art as someone who made vital contributions both to the development of conceptual practice in the 1970s, as well as the growing conversation around gender and equality in the arts.
Lynn was born in Wellington and began painting from a young age. At 13, she began taking formal classes at the Wellington Technical College and she enrolled in the School of Fine Arts at Canterbury University from 1949-52.
Modern styles and ideas were popular in Christchurch during this post-war period, and many of Lynn’s teachers encouraged abstraction – she would often experiment with these ideas in depictions of the Canterbury landscape.
Aigantighe Art Gallery is privileged to hold Study for Settlement (Timaru), c.1964 in its permanent collection, which exemplifies this early era of her work. It was produced during the several years that Lynn lived on a farm near Te Moana.
This image demonstrates her familiarity with the region. Through the use of earth-tones she captures a typical winter’s evening in Timaru, evoking the scent and texture of the smog.
In comparison to the later conceptual works for which she is acclaimed this painting seems rather tame. However, Lynn claims that the time she spent in South Canterbury was ‘‘a vital period of reflection’’, during which she rigorously studied art history, feminist philosophy and other contemporary artists. This research proved central to later works in which the deconstruction of art history, including its gender biases, were a core and consistent theme.
Study for Settlement (Timaru), c.1964 is on display as part of the Abstractions exhibition, until August 11.