ART HOUSE

A project inviting two artists to produce work in Wellington’s Turnbull House is offering unique perspectives on the building’s interior while its doors remain closed to the public

WORDS: CHERIE JACOBSON / IMAGERY: ADRIENNE MARTYN AND SHANNON NOVAK

Adrienne Martyn’s photographs of historic buildings evoke a sense of mystery. Empty rooms invite speculation: who inhabited these spaces, where have they gone and why? In her latest series, images of repeated grid patterns found in wood panelling and window panes at Turnbull House hint at a sense of order and formality, even among the peeling wallpaper and construction work.

For Shannon Novak, these same empty spaces in the Category 1 historic place inspired a series of temporary installations, documented through photography. The installations draw on the building’s history and are part of a wider project called Make Visible, designed to grow support, increase awareness and create positive change for rainbow communities in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.

Turnbull House is a familiar sight for central Wellington commuters as they hurry from the train station to the streets beyond. Built as the private home and library of avid collector Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull – who spent his life amassing a collection of books, maps, paintings, drawings, artefacts and much more – it was the original home of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

However, the public have long had to content themselves with an exterior view of the building after it was deemed earthquake prone in 2009 and closed to the public three years later to await further strengthening work.

That work is now underway thanks to a multi-year project under the care of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga that will include seismic strengthening, a full systems upgrade, a lift to improve accessibility, and interior refurbishment. Once completed, it’s intended that Turnbull House will return to public use; possibilities include offices, exhibition space and meeting and function rooms.

But while the building currently remains physically off-limits, it’s been possible to see beyond its walls – and gain new insights into its past, present and future – thanks to the work of Adrienne and Shannon.

Shannon is an Auckland-based, multi-disciplinary artist and founder of the Safe Space Alliance, a global LGBTQI+-led non-profit organisation that aims to help people identify, navigate and create safe spaces for LGBTQI+ communities.

Adrienne is a Wellington-based art photographer whose body of work includes portrait, abstract and landscape photography. Since 2017 she has been especially interested in photographing empty gallery and museum interiors, often in states of transition.

For both artists (who, incidentally, have never met), the opportunity to work within Turnbull House came about organically.

Shannon had been engaged with the Rainbow List project (see Heritage New Zealand magazine, Summer 2021) and was travelling to Wellington in October last year for Make Visible, while a Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga staff member was familiar with Adrienne’s work and felt Turnbull House at the start of its strengthening journey aligned with her other projects in historic buildings, such as Anderson House, the Robert McDougall Art Gallery and Golder Cottage.

Due to the earthquake-prone status of Turnbull House, the artists’ access to the building was under strictly controlled circumstances once the site had been secured. Working under such restrictions can create challenges, as Shannon notes.

“It means compressing a standard installation timeline into a matter of hours in one day. You don’t get to test work or play around with ideas over time – you have to turn up, rapidly test, develop, install, document, then de-install it within, on average, four to 12 hours. I find this high-pressure scenario extremely tough on the mind, body and spirit but, as a result, highly rewarding.”

The result of Shannon’s time in Turnbull House is Volumes –a series of nine installations documented as photographs. While his site-specific work is always influenced by the space itself, there was a topic he knew he wanted to explore with Turnbull House, which is evident in the installation Were They?. The work is quite literally a question written in large letters on a burgundy-coloured square, hung in a blank space above the fireplace in the groundfloor library where Alexander Turnbull’s portrait once hung.

The piece refers to speculation by historians and biographers about Turnbull’s sexuality. As with many historical figures, there is no clear evidence of it. Many of the identifiers we use today would not have been recognised in Turnbull’s lifetime and this creates a tension between recognising and celebrating rainbow history and respecting the complex reality of life prior to the Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986.

As Shannon sees it, “It’s about growing comfortable with the question mark. Not everyone fits or wants to fit with a specific identity or identities.”

Shannon’s work is rich in detail, often reflecting the research behind it. The colour and font used in Were They? were taken from the first book in Turnbull’s collection, while another work, Physique Pictorial, edits images of muscled men in underwear from four publications banned by the Indecent Publications Tribunal in 1965.

This work also has an element of real-world activism to it, as these publications remain classified as ‘indecent’ with restricted access, so he is working with the Classification Office to have them declassified.

Some of Shannon’s installations work with the fabric of the building itself and interventions undertaken as part of the initial stages of the strengthening project. The Glory, for example, co-opts a hole created in a bathroom wall as part of an asbestos survey.

Like Shannon, Adrienne describes her approach as intuitive. Entering Turnbull House last December, she was immediately drawn to certain rooms and the grid patterns she noticed in them, resulting in nine final photographs. She will return to these same nine angles over time to observe the changes during the strengthening process.

In the images there are contrasts between wood-panelled walls, richly coloured carpets and curtains, and spaces with the floors stripped bare or carpet beginning to lift at the edges, a temporary wall just visible and holes in the ceiling.

Adrienne’s first photographic series of an historic building in transition, Anderson House, featured drop cloths that created beautifully sculptural folds; this is echoed in the Turnbull House series, with curtains gathered in a practical manner that becomes a point of focus in the empty rooms. Architectural features are highlighted, and the play of light and shadow draws the eye to certain corners and details.

Although there can be a sense of abandonment in her photographs, Adrienne says her work isn’t about loss.

“It’s about revealing what is present after everything has gone. What remains.”

Both Adrienne’s and Shannon’s Turnbull House works are available to view on their websites. With many earthquakeprone buildings closed to the public, they agree that giving artists the opportunity to work within these sites helps people to engage with them. Bringing new perspectives to historic buildings can also introduce them, and their stories, to new audiences and build new connections, they say.

So perhaps, as a result of their work, some of those busy commuters shuffling past Turnbull House each day will be intrigued – and take a second look.

Turnbull House Through Time

An eclectic mix of Scottish Baronial, Queen Anne and Medieval architectural elements, Turnbull House was completed in 1916. It was designed by William Turnbull (no relation) for collector Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull, whose stated main interest was “anything whatever relating to this Colony, on its history, flora, fauna, geology and inhabitants, will be fish for my net, from as early a date as possible until now”.

When Turnbull died in 1918, his collection was bequeathed to the nation, and the government purchased Turnbull House to enable the collection to remain in its home. It opened to the public as a research and reference library in 1920; however, the collection continued to grow and eventually found a larger home within Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, the National Library of New Zealand.

Since the collection’s departure in 1973, Turnbull House has been home to various tenants. In the 1970s, plans for a motorway access ramp meant it was threatened with demolition, but strong community opposition saw the proposal withdrawn. Prior to the current work, the building also underwent previous earthquake-strengthening interventions in 1955 and 1995. n