Andrew Paul Wood
Undreamed Of … 50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship by Priscilla Pitts and Andrea Hotere (Otago University Press, 2017), 224 pp., $59.95
It’s tough being an artist in Aotearoa – it doesn’t exactly come with the flotilla of perks and acknowledgements one might find in countries less suspicious of culture. Even so, there is a lot more in the way of laurels available now than there was back when the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship was the only one. Established at the University of Otago in 1966 through the efforts of Charles Brasch (1909–1973), and named after the nation’s most famous expatriate artist, it has long been one of the most prestigious awards for a New Zealand artist, with the financial freedom of a lecturer’s salary, a studio to work in, and some of the most extraordinary cultural resources in the country. Unlike its sister fellowships, the Burns (writing) and the Mozart (music), the Hodgkins is something of an outlier in that the university has no art school; that’s the province of Otago Polytechnic – ‘Olam’ to Elam and Ilam – and a very fine producer of talent. [Read more…]