ARTS & CULTURE

Local Freemans Bay resident, Brent Coutts, has just published his book telling the story of three homosexual New Zealand soldiers in WWII.

‘Crossing the Lines’ is the first history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in World War II. Award-winning teacher, historian and local resident, Brent Coutts brings their experiences to life through the extraordinary experiences of Harold Robinson, Ralph Dyer and Douglas Morison, three men who shared a queer identity and a love of performance. As female impersonators in the Kiwi and Tui concert parties in the Pacific, they found a place to live as gay men within the military forces, boosting the morale of personnel in the Pacific Campaign and, along the way, falling in love with some of the men they met.

After ten years of multiple first-hand interviews and painstaking archival research, Coutts discovered there was a surprising level of acceptance of homosexuality by the military, considering its illegal status. “We assume people had to keep their sexuality hidden and yes, discretion was necessary, but homosexual soldiers had a fairly open experience regarding being gay during the war,” says Coutts. Harold Robinson, a ballet dancer, found a role as the batman (personal servant) of Major John Marshall, who later became New Zealand’s prime minister. “He’s gone down in history as being one of our conservative PMs, yet, during the war, he had a batman who crossed-dressed.”

Coutts discovered from court-martial files that very few prosecutions were carried out on grounds of homosexuality. “Of thousands of court-martials, there were just eight prosecutions involving ten gay men among the surviving records.”

‘Crossing the Lines’ reveals Harold’s friendship and later marriage to Auckland socialite and lesbian, Freda Stark. “Harold met Freda in Auckland, just as he was about to leave for Egypt. Freda sent him food parcels. Later, Harold got a soldier’s bursary to attend the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School in London where Freda joined him. They got married and tried for a few months to have a normal relationship.”

This richly illustrated account, which includes rarely seen photos, is principally a story of mateship. It follows the men from their formative prewar lives to their experiences living in post-war London, where they embraced the many new possibilities available. It is a story of the search for love and belonging, and the foundation of the queer community today.

This is the first ever published history of gay New Zealand soldiers during WWII. Written by award-winning, Freeman’s Bay based historian Brent Coutts, it is available now.  PN @ Whitespace Trusttum/Twiss 2-20 August Philip Trusttum & Greer Twiss - a selection of works on paper.

Greer Twiss is the “Godfather” of contemporary sculpture in New Zealand. For more than 50 years he has made sculpture, exhibited, been collected, been commissioned, taught, been reviewed and written about – without interruption.

The development of New Zealand sculpture post World War II cannot be considered without the massive contribution of Greer Twiss as artist and as teacher. From a childhood interest in puppetry that saw him performing to audiences as a child and as a pioneer of television in this country, his making of figures evolved into the early cast bronze athletes that his reputation as a sculptor was built on.

Greer rapidly emerged as a pioneer of cast metal in New Zealand, and as the figure head of contemporary sculpture. A major public sculpture group, in bronze, commissioned for Karangahape Road by the Auckland City Council secured his youthful reputation as a leading figure in the New Zealand contemporary art scene.

Greer has remained always inventive, returning frequently to cast bronze as a favoured medium but also working in wax, sheet lead, sheet galvanised iron, wood and steel.

He has exhibited widely here and abroad and has been the subject of two major retrospective exhibitions by the Wellington City Art Gallery and Auckland Art Gallery. Soon after graduating from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts he returned as a teacher, becoming an Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture. Not only has he been a powerful and persuasive figure as an artist, but he has also shaped and stimulated the talent of generations of students who have passed through his studios. He was made an ONZM for Sculpture in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2002, and received an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2011. (Dr Rodney Wilson. from Arts Foundation website).

Philip Trusttum is one of New Zealand’s most recognised contemporary painters of major works. Philip graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury School of Art in 1964. In 1967 he travelled on a Queen Elizabeth 11 Arts Council scholarship and since then has travelled and worked in Europe and North America. He was part of ANZART at the Edinburgh Arts Festival in 1984 – the same year he exhibited on New York’s 57th Street at the Jill Kornblee Gallery.

He has shown in Sydney, New York, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch since then. In 1998 he was the only New Zealand artist reviewed in the New York Times. Philip Trusttum is represented in all major public and private collections within New Zealand.  PN

WHITESPACE, 20 Monmouth Street, T: 09 361 6331, www.whitespace.co.nz

TRUSTTUM / TWISS

2 – 20 AUGUST 2020 PHILIP TRUSTTUM GREER TWISS +

This highly talented pair will be performing Brahms Concerto for Violin and Cello with St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra & Conductor David Kay, Sunday 16 August @2.30 pm

Amalia Hall – Violinist Amalia has received widespread acclaim for her ability to move audiences with her “sumptuous and sweet tone”, inherent musicality and natural facility. Born in New Zealand, at eight Amalia began playing chamber music with her siblings in the Hall String Quartet and has gone on to play chamber music with many eminent musicians. Ashely Brown – Cellist

At 9 she made her debut with the APO. At 10 she was the youngest ever member to be accepted into the NZSO National Youth Orchestra. At 16 she became an associate member of the APO and was contracted as Principal 1st Violin in 2012. At 19 she completed her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Auckland and went on to postgraduate studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. Since then she has lectured and held master classes. In her teens Amalia won all of the major awards in New Zealand and her International competition successes almost beggar belief. Check In 2016 Amalia’s appointment as Concertmaster of Orchestra Wellington made her New Zealand’s youngest concertmaster. In 2019 she was appointed Violinist of NZTrio, described as “New Zealand’s most indispensable ensemble”. Amalia has been a soloist with major orchestras in Europe, China, the UK, South Africa, Vietnam, Mexico, USA, Australia, and Uzbekistan, where she played all five of the Mozart Violin Concertos in one concert. Amalia currently plays on a Vincenzo Rugeri violin from c. 1694, generously on loan from a private benefactor.

out her web site www.amaliahall.com Acclaimed as a musician of “unimpeachable artistry”, Ashley Brown is one of New Zealand’s leading soloists, collaborators, chamber musicians and recording artists. He was a member of the Turnovsky Trio, Principal Cellist of the APO, is a founder of NZTrio and is a passionate advocate for New Zealand music.

His teachers have included Alexander Ivashkin, Aldo Parisot, and William Pleeth. His musical curiosity has led him to share the stage with diverse composers and artists like Dame Gillian Whitehead, Moana Maniapoto, Michael Houstoun, Kristian Jaarvi and Neil Finn. Ashley plays the 1762 William Forster ‘Liberte’ cello. www.NZTrio.com

If you have not heard St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra play then you are missing one of the finest musical experiences in Auckland. TICKETS: Eventfinda, or door sales cash only. Adults $30, concessions $25, children under 12 free. Student rush on the day, $15.  PN

ST MATTHEW-IN-THE-CITY CHURCH corner Wellesley & Hobson Streets. www.smco.org.nz

First Tuesday @ St Matthew-in-the-City

Luca Manghi (flute) and David Kelly (piano) will be performers at First Tuesday on 1 September at St Matthew-in-the-City. sonata by Mozart and Suite

In a programme of music by Mozart, John Harbison and Ralph Vaughan Williams, will show off both their exemplary talents and the heavenly acoustic of the space.

Luca Manghi was born in Parma, Italy, and became a prize winning flute player as a student at Boito National Music Conservatory. After an orchestral career in Europe he moved to New Zealand where he is an active teacher (Universities of of the New Zealand Navy Band in August, as well as sweet piano and soaring

Auckland, Otago and Waikato) and a freelance chamber musician in high demand.

David Kelly is a graduate of University of Canterbury and a busy repetiteur Philharmonia Orchestra, Auckland Chamber Orchestra and Christchurch Symphony. He is also an active chamber music performer, often in association with Lucan Manghi. Manghi and Kelly have selected a programme which anticipates the gift of spring in a sunny de Ballet for piano and flute by Vaughan Williams.

St Matthew’s is a space which is equally good for bold and loud music, like that for New Zealand Opera. David enjoys a strong association with Auckland

flute as in this concert programme.

Further concerts at lunchtime on the first Tuesday of the month will feature Lisa Chou (piano) playing a bold all Beethoven programme on 6 October, and Paul Chan (organ) on 3 November, pitting his prodigious technique and musicianship against the great four manual Henry Willis III instrument, much treasured by St Matthew’s.  PN www.stmatthews.nz

Sun 16 August

at 2pm

programme Borodin In the Steppes of Central Asia Brahms Double Concerto Op 102 A minor Borodin Symphony No 2 B minor

soloists Amalia Hall & Ashley Brown conductor David Kay

Luca Manghi & David Kelly Soaring Flute and Sweet Piano

Tuesday 1 st September, 12.10-12.50pm

A programme of music by Mozart, John Harbison and Vaughan Williams. Entry by koha.

Uptown Art Scene

Be kind. It’s a phrase that helped us through the last few months, and it’s surprising, perhaps, that we had to remember to be so.

Strength is often not in taking a hard line at all, but in being gentle and kind, over and over and over (so said The Smiths).

There are no hard lines in the paintings of Kathryn Stevens at Whitespace. They are so soft you can fall into them, sink into their diffused light like being swallowed by soft cushions of colour. They remind me of slowly waking into the emerging light of morning, as objects begin to separate from the gloom and seek their specific shape and hue.

These are sumptuous paintings, suffused in colour and light through a thoughtful new approach to materials. For over 20 years, Kathryn has been working colour with exceptionally delicate layering and transparency, using oils on canvas.

These new paintings are made from acrylic on silk: so much softer, and translucent to the point of being airy. The silk allows light through, bouncing off the wall and back through the painting, so the planes of colour are lit from both sides and the works become ambient light boxes.

The exhibition is called 'Surfacing', a title that has many connotations in relation to the works. The way light and colour react on both the silk and the wall behind creates an undefined surface, where the folds and pleats of colour are supplemented by the shadows and wood supports below them.

Surfacing is a liminal state, moving between one element into another yet not fully in either; I’m reminded again of the warm, half state of waking or falling asleep.

Mostly the colours are contemplative: soft-focus greens and powdery pinks, and the subtle blues in Cell 1 and Cell 4 are especially dreamy. Stronger violets, reds and greys increase the dynamic, culminating in Cell 12’s slightly burnt orange sliced purposefully by a sharp dreadnought grey.

Cover image Kathryn Stevens, Surfacing 1, 2 & 3, 340x 84.5cm ea, acrylic on architectural film

Kathryn Stevens, Cell 12, 600x500mm, acrylic on silk and cast acrylic on pine stretchers

Surfacing shows Kathryn taking her earlier abstractions of architectural spaces and dissolving those solid forms to offer us a more intricate and changeable space. There is plenty of strength and surety in these soft and meditative paintings. (EVAN WOODRUFFE/STUDIO ART SUPPLIES)  PN

Relive four decades of New Zealand’s history at Slice of Life: The World Famous Dunedin Study Exhibition on now at the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT).

The exhibition’s subject, The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, has followed and analysed the lives of 1,037 babies born in Dunedin between 1972–3 for more than four decades. So far, results of the study have been published in more than 1,200 academic papers and have come to affect millions of lives.

Displays of childhood toys, symbols of youth rebellion and the evolution of technology parallel the lives of participants, as they started school, learned to drive, experimented with sex, drugs and alcohol, pursued careers and started families of their own.

Replica rooms decorated in the styles of the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s transport visitors to past decades. Through each decade, visitors are presented with key findings from the study, at first focusing on child health, then evolving to include behavioural findings.

Interactive exhibits then draw visitors into the study, offering a handson lesson in how our hearts work, how our lives might affect how we age and the chance to try some of the tests that participants completed as children.

This exhibition invites visitors to explore what is sometimes referred to as the ‘science of us’ in which they learn about the study, the anonymous lives of the participants, and maybe a little bit about themselves.

Slice of Life: The World-Famous Dunedin Study is on now and included in MOTAT General Admission. Visit www.motat.nz/exhibitions