I’m told excitement ran high in the Addison Theatre, Baycourt on Sunday night – the event awards and trash to fash parade for the Sustainable Art Challenge 2016. Monday morning saw the pack-down of the X-Space, the return of entries to the Envirohub at the Historic Village and the set-up of the exhibition of winners at the Creative Tauranga Community Gallery, Willow Street, Downtown Tauranga.
The focus is reusing, repurposing and recycling. It’s part of the overall sustainability awareness programme organised and run from the Envirohub the working arm of theTauranga based Environment Trust.
How did it start? The Sustainable Art Challenge was open to enter from early February to 11th June 2016 – long enough to decide whether you were interested, in or out. On Thursday the 30th June we had to drop our entries off at the Baycourt X-Space; the temporary gallery space for alternative art and creativity. I met Tauranga Girl’s College student Hannah with her Mum Tessa checking out delivery details for Tessa and Kylie’s joint contribution to the Challenge. Yep – made them take a look at the ARTbop entry.
The final gallery-style presentation in the X-Space didn’t occur by accident, a great deal of thought and energy went into the placement and presentation of the works contributed to the exhibition.
ARTbop’s entry was literally contained – in its own cardboard box and was light and easy to manage
but this could not be said of some of the amazing stuff that was entered and brought in – take a look below:
What did I want to take home – the outdoor fire – an exquisite metal construction of use and practicality.
The plastic bottle teepee with its plastic lid adornment.
One of the fabulous recycled seatbelt bags: LV eat your heart out!
And here are some more of the works exhibited at Baycourt X-Space
The wonderful little spider lamp on the bottom right of the above image was also a winner and you can see this piece glowing at Creative Tauranga’s Gallery.
My image doesn’t do justice to the quirky style of this entry: the artist had recycled all her children’s broken toys into a Pizza Library ark-installation of whimsy. It was one of my favourites – it made me laugh.
You could put bids in on some of the items. Here’s the Envirohub’s Laura recording a bid for the rustic oak-planked bookcase.
So Monday morning it’s pack up time. I show up as instructed and give Laura and Sarah a hand to pack-down and deliver a load of out there stuff back down to the Historic Village. I skip past Creative Tauranga on my way to review the current exhibitions at the Tauranga Art Gallery and there are Millie and Sarah talking their way through the finalisation of the set up of the winning entry exhibition.
You’ll be delighted by the diversity and quality of the exhibition but you need to come down and see it in person. And look for the article coming up about the launch of the exhibition. If you can’t get down over the school holidays to look at this exhibition you’ll get a taste of the overall ambit of the Sustainable Art Challenge. Congratulations to the Envirohub and its Trust for an excellent event.
Creative Tauranga aims to consistently review and deliver to the needs of its community in the arts and cultural arena and to build a vibrant, diverse, healthy and unique community.
Located in Tauranga’s CBD, Creative Tauranga is a community gallery and arts hub. As well as showing a range of exhibitions by local artists, the team at Creative Tauranga delivers various events and supports community arts and cultural events so ensure the Western Bay of Plenty delivers and experiences a wide range of activity within the community.
To become a ‘Friend’ of Creative Tauranga, start receiving our weekly What’s On e-newsletter, or make an inquiry, please contact Jennifer, Kalena or Millie.
Email – reception@creativetauranga.org.nz Phone – 07 928 0280
Location – 95 Willow Street, Tauranga Open Monday – Friday. 9:00am – 4:30pm
Rosemary Balu. Rosemary Balu is the founding and current editor of ARTbop. Rosemary has arts and law degrees from the University of Auckland. She has been a working lawyer and has participated in a wide variety of community activities where information gathering, submission writing, community advocacy and education have been involved. Interested in all forms of the arts since childhood Rosemary is focused on further developing and expanding multi-media ARTbop as the magazine for all the creative arts in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.
