Artists in Eden

John Daly-Peoples

Artists in Eden

Essex Rd Reserve, Mt Eden Village

March 20, 10.00 – 2.00 (Auction 2.30)

This Saturday Mt Eden Village sees the annual Artists in Eden, one of Auckland’s great community arts events which has taken place each year for the past 33 years.

The event in which artists create interpretations or respond to Mt Eden is a unique event and an example of the community arts in action – artists and the community focussed on some common theme and outcome, the artists aware of the audience and purpose, the audience participating in the event as viewers and commentators.

The day provides artist with the opportunity to demystify the production of art, to let people see how artists create their work, how it evolves on the page or canvas.

The public have an opportunity to engage with the artists to discover how and why an artist works in a particular way and what their relationship to Mt Eden is. It was also a way for the artist to move their studio outside and let people see how they work

This year forty artists will be taking part including Dick Frizzell, George Baloghy Russell Jackson and Peata Larkin. There are also several younger emerging artists who have won the Eden Arts Art Schools Awards and the Young Mt Eden Artists Award including Brittany Walker-Smith and Rhea Maheshwari

Over the years there have been over fifteen hundred paintings, drawings photographs and sculptures produced by close to 100 artists and many of the artists have taken innovative approaches. Jeff Thompson brought along his machine for knitting strips of corrugated iron into a sculpture of Mount Eden.

Nigel Brown made a woodblock print producing a two coloured print in an edition of three and in the case of Robert Ellis his participation led to  his major series of paintings –“Maungawahua / Mt Eden”.

Among the artist who have taken part in previous years have been Pat Hanly, Don Binney, Peter Siddell,  Terry Stringer, Alexis Hunter, Clyde Scott, Geoff Tune, Martin Ball, Peata Larkin, Dick Frizzell and Stanley Palmer