OUR VISION

Anna Caselberg was a major artist and the daughter of one of New Zealand’s best known painters Sir Tosswill Woollaston. “Anna’s art was firmly connected to the cultural growth of this country. She painted from the heart and shared with the best of New Zealand Art a toughness of vision and also a lyricism that transcended the hardship and discipline of painting. Anna could paint the Otago Peninsula like no one else. The truth of subject was always there and truth is always personal. Her paintings made the art of seeing miraculous. Her paintings were everyday miracles, without ostentation, with humility”. Wayne Seyb, artist and friend.

WHY IN BROAD BAY?

In Gwyn Street, Broad Bay, Dunedin was the holiday crib (or bach) of internationally respected poet/writer/editor Charles Brasch (1909–1973). For many years, this cottage was open home for some of the best known writers and artists of the time - Janet Frame, Frank Sargeson, Colin McCahon, RAK Mason, Ruth Dallas,Douglas Lilburn, James K Baxter, Evelyn Page, Denis Glover and many others. It was a creative place; somewhere to write and paint. It was also a refuge where artists could discuss, criticise and be criticised by peers who were knowledgeable, honest and passionate.


The Caselbergs house in Gwyn street

The significance of Gwyn Street to New Zealand art and literature is perhaps summed up by the words written on a lithograph by a frequent visitor to the cottage, artist Colin McCahon. McCahon inscribed the words: God it is all dark. The heart beat but there is no answering hark... The words were part of a series of poems written by McCahon’s good friend and collaborator John Caselberg. The poems were dedicated to the desperate plight of the artist Vincent Van Gogh. McCahon, however, saw them as equally relevant to the plight of many local artists and writers, who, during the 40s and 50s, faced indifference and even hostility from many New Zealanders. For many years, Gwyn Street was one place where artists and writers could gather and hear an ‘answering hark’. Charles Brasch died in 1973. In his will he bequeathed the Gwyn St. cottage to John and Anna Caselberg. For the next 30 years it was used as a place for John to write, and for Anna to paint. The cottage next door became their home and library until they both passed away, within a short time, in 2004.

TRUSTEE PROFILES

Lesley Hirst 
I have worked for over 30 years as an art educator both in the UK & NZ.
Moved to Broad Bay in 1989 and am passionate about the Peninsula’s beauty and rich cultural history.
During my time at Macandrew Intermediate School in Dunedin, I organized nine very successful Art Auctions specifically to raise funds to enable artists to work with children.
At present I run Art Workshops By the Sea from Broad Bay with my partner as the cuisine expert - and love it!
 
Janet Downs 
Broad bay resident,
Local GP & joint venture partner with Lesley Hirst in the locally based Boatshed Art Workshops.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Lynn Taylor 
A visual artist who works across and between disciplines with an interest in ‘valuing the undervalued.’ She creates prints, objects and surfaces that invite viewers to touch, add to the narrative and become imprinted on and by its stories.
 
Graduating in 1984 with a Bachelor of Education she focused her early career on specialist art teaching. Her later involvement with art education includes lecturing appointments at the School of Art, Dunedin, the Tairawhiti Polytechnic, Gisborne and the Sapporo School of Art, Sapporo, Japan. In 1998 she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Art, Otago Polytechnic. In 2003 she received her Master of Fine Arts (distinction), the culmination of research activity engaged with the mapping of memory and erasure.
 
Taylor’s concern with tensions between the influence and confluence of multi cultures and our ability to locate ourselves has lead to art residencies and working with communities in Japan and Korea with the support of arts funding. Her work has received a number of awards and is held in many national and international collections and her published articles appear in the journals Context and Junctures. Major exhibitions include: re: Kakawai, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2003, invisible bridge Jeonju, Korea 2003 with a parallel exhibition in Dunedin, 2004 and the wind between New Zealand and Japan, Otaru, Japan 2005. 
  
 
Peter Hayden 
Is an actor, writer, producer and television host and has worked in theatre, television and film and between drama and documentary. 
 
Has worked in theatre at Downstage and Circa in Wellington and Fortune Theatre Dunedin. Productions include: Tales from Hollywood, Glorious Ruins, Oleanna, The Dolls House, Sixteen Words for Water, Horseplay and in 2004 performing the one man show Daylight Atheist.

Movie experience includes roles in Arriving Tuesday, Shaker Run and Illustrious Energy which earned an industry award as Best Supporting Actor. Has appeared in television dramas including Maurice Gee’s Fire Raiser and TV3’s Cover Story. 
Currently on leave from his position as an Executive Producer with NHNZ Ltd, Peter is working in Film and theatre in Amsterdam
 
 
Robert West 

Robert has worked as a senior manager in the public health sector, both in the in the UK and NZ, for the past 20 years.
 From 1998 to 2005 he was Director of Dunedin based mental health charity Artsenta, and is currently Director of  Cacao Tree Ltd, a company which provides products to tourist retail outlets throughout New Zealand.  Originally trained as an artist, with a Masters in Fine Art from Camberwell College of Art and Design, London, he continues to practice as an artist, and sells his work through galleries and dealers in Otago and Southland.
 
 

Kat Taiaroa

Visual Artist
Organic Gardener
Mother of three
Partner to one
One dog three cats
 
Kat graduated from Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 2005 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Textiles. She lives in Broad Bay and works from her studio at home.

 Kirsten Lovelock Kirsten is a Dunedin based visual artist who has exhibited internationally and in New Zealand. She has received prizes in national and local competitions and her paintings are held in New Zealand and international collections. Often focusing on myth, legend and questions of identity her works draw on her formal training as a social anthropologist and practicing social researcher and not surprisingly invariably comprise a peopled landscape. Kirsten currently balances life as a visual artist with a research fellowship at the University of Otago and collaborative research work with colleagues in both the North and South Islands. At the hub of all of this activity are her husband, two children, 1 dog, 2 cats, 2 fish and good friends.

and last but not least ....

Alan Roddick (Treasurer)
Alan Roddick is a retired public health dentist who lives at BroadBay, and he and Pat were neighbours of Anna and John Caselberg’s. He has also been a poet, editor, and literary critic for 50 years, first published in Landfall in 1957. Blackwood and Janet Paul published a collection of his poems, The Eye Corrects, in 1967. He edited the YCs monthly radio programme “Poetry” for four years (1968-9 and 1972-3).
 
Alan has been the Literary Executor for the Estate of Charles Brasch since 1973, and edited Brasch’s posthumous book of poems Home Ground (Caxton Press, 1974) and the Brasch Collected Poems (Oxford, 1984). He is also the author of Allen Curnow (Oxford, 1980), which is still the only book-length study of Curnow’s work. He has most recently been the Editor of the New Zealand Dental Journal (2003 to 2007). He is currently planning Selected Poems of Charles Brasch, which he hopes to bring out in 2009, to mark the centenary of Brasch’s birth.