The Whitecliffe Art School

SHERIDAN KEITH

The Whitecliffe Art School in Parnell, Auckland, is a highly organised, energetic and resourceful organisation, somewhat out on a limb in the New Zealand art world and therefore probably all the more determined to build a reputation. Director Gregg Whitecliffe intends it also to be a successful business venture. In a country without a tradition of private art schools the Whitecliffe goes all the way, even to the extent of creating its own Diploma Courses, which are 'made up of combinations of term courses over one to two years ... have attendance requirements and a final submission, but otherwise are not examined, and can be achieved part-time.'

I talked to Director Gregg Whitecliffe summer holiday period while classes for children were in progress. (The school caters for adults too during the summer period, with classes from outdoor landscape painting to video and stained glass.)

The Whitecliffe school uses up-to-date equipment, including video, and produces its own in-class material. I was shown a sequence directed towards a life class. Video's ability to freeze and replay movement provides a superb tool for students investigating in this area. Other videos in the library record interviews with artists, and exhibitions held in the two Whitecliffe Galleries.

The Whitecliffe Art School

The school takes up to three hundred pupils per term, offers fifty-one classes and employs around twenty-five tutors on a part-time basis. The range of classes is wide, including bronze work at the Art Foundry in Parnell and glass classes at Ponsonby's Sunbeam Glassworks. There is a photographic studio in Balmoral, and filmmaking is offered in association with Acess film/video company.

The Whitecliffe's latest venture is the acquisition of an 1840 historic building (originally stables) in Epsom to house the Whitecliffe Press, where stone lithography classes are being held and limited edition lithographic works produced.

Expertise for this project has been recruited overseas in the person of Frans Baetens, a master printer with twenty-eight years experience, trained in Belgium. He and his wife and family are now established in Auckland.

The relationship between money and art has always been complex and sometimes ironic. The Whitecliffe approach is to treat art, and the teaching of art skills, as a marketable commodity, and to market those propositions which are considered the most viable financially. It is Whitecliffe's opinion that there is a large overseas market for hand-pulled quality lithographic works, and he intends to promote the work of New Zealand artists in this medium overseas, in Australia, Europe and America where he has already built up contacts.

Stone lithography is being offered as a part-time course in 1984, during the day, evening and weekends over three terms, starting in February, June and September. Students take one three hour class weekly for ten weeks. Classes are deliberately small to give good access to stones and presses.

The Whitecliffe school also offers its own Diploma of Printmaking which combines six term courses and covers woodcut, screen-printing, calligraphy, mono-printing and etching.

The Whitecliffe Press is interested in approaches from artists and organisations wishing to print limited editions.