Heritage Librarian Raewynn Robertson will talk briefly about the J.T. Diamond Collection held at the West Auckland Research Centre and will highlight four photographers in that collection: Louis Marusich, Isobel Hooker, Charlie Spearpoint and Percy Trenwith.

Location: Titirangi Community House

There are many ways to publish your research. Author Sandra Coney publishes her own books, renowned journalist Jenny Wheeler who is discovering everything about indie publishing with four novels on the go, and Sally Greer from Beatnik publishing, who specializes in collaborative books by artists and designers. The panel will answer questions and share learnings from their experiences.

Location: Titirangi Community House

Anna Fomison produced and directed the 60-minute documentary on Project Twin Streams (PTS) with videography by Davian Lorson. They will show highlights of this documentary which has just been launched to mark the 15- year anniversary of PTS, a large scale environmental restoration initiative that restored 56k of West Auckland stream banks over ten years with an integrated community development approach.

Melanie Wittwer and two representatives from other local writing groups will share with you who they are, how you can join and what it brought them as writers.

Mandy Patmore is the Creative Director of Kakano Youth Arts Collective: a unique visual arts project based at Corban Estate Arts Centre, which developed as an attempt to recognise the needs of some of the most vulnerable young people in West Auckland who have been excluded from mainstream education, and many a long history of offending. Under the guidance of experienced artists, these young people are given the opportunity to develop their art practice, their confidence and their self-worth. This important work is having a transformative effect in the streets of West Auckland.

During August of this year Judy Millar presented a solo exhibition of small works on paper from 1989 and 2017 at Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland. The works from 1989 showed Millar’s immediate response to the wild landscape of Auckland’s West Coast when she first moved there soon after leaving art school. The recent works track her newfound reflection on the importance of place; place not only considered as a location but more importantly as a set of determining circumstances. Taking cues from European Romanticism Millar will question her own desire to head for the hills and live for more than 30 years on a windswept cliff.

A recycling ethic and a varied career from steel construction at Marsden Point, repairing jewellery and making metalwork ornaments and fittings for fancy restaurants, bars and hotels honed the skills and creativity that saw the sculptor Peter Sauerbier emerge.  He began to create in his Massey workshop fanciful creations from his treasure hunts in secondhand markets, building sites and scrap metal yards.   A collection of 100 of his works valued at over a million dollars were gifted by him in 2006  to Waitakere City.  Share Fiona Drummond’s exploration into the life and work of this fascinating man.

Painter? Writer/historian? Political commentator? Strongly independent thinker and philosopher? Typical Westie? This presentation is a warm and respectful discussion about how an engaging, eclectic and somewhat eccentric artist strode across the broad spectrum of conventional labels with total disregard for them and ticked off his own ‘boxes’…and took a bit of a tilt at other peoples. Some of Ivan’s work donated to the West Auckland Historical Society and the West Auckland Research Centre will be displayed to be enjoyed along with the talk.

Titirangi Folk Music club has been contributing to the West Auckland music scene for over 50 years.  Current secretary and long time committee member, Tricia Lee, will attempt to answer the oft times controversial question, “what is folk music?”  She will talk about the founding of the club, its history and some of the many highlights over the years.

I have had long association with the West, since I bought some land in Waiatarua in 1969. In my presentation, I will discuss what it means to have lived and worked here, since 1980, in the house I had built. In 1983 I began working as a stage designer at Theatre Corporate. Since then my life has been project based, juggling between working in clay and theatre design. I began as a potter in 1966 and in 2016 celebrated 50 years of working in clay with a major retrospective CAUSE AND EFFECT at Te Uru Contemporary Art Gallery in Titirangi.

The return of a painting to the Gibbon’s old homestead at Whatipu, set the presenter on a journey of discovery to find out who the artist was, revealing his dedication to painting the West Coast, and his colourful, bohemian lifestyle.

Titirangi and the surrounding Waitakere Ranges have long been an important hub and source of inspiration for artists. Even abstract painters have made a home here and found inspiration from their surroundings and from each other. In advance of the forthcoming exhibition and book Parallel Universe, which surveys the career of painter-designer Roy Good, Te Uru Director Andrew Clifford positions Good amongst a group of pioneering mid-century artists and gallerists who helped lead the development of abstraction in Aotearoa-New Zealand from the forests of the West Coast.

Architect Harry Turbott (1930-2016) returned from studying Landscape architecture at Harvard in 1960. He taught and worked as a consultant and chose to base his family at Karekare, from where he tirelessly defended the Waitakere and West Coast from inappropriate development.  Perhaps his greatest design was for the Arataki visitors centre where he sought to channel the energies and stories of Te Kawerau a Maki and the Waitakere Ranges for the people of Auckland.

Tanya Wilkinson lives in the Atkinson House, built in 1946-7 in Titirangi, designed by Tibor Donner. From the late 1960s to the early 2000s the house was owned by the Waitakere City Council and from the late ‘70s operated as the Titirangi Community House. In this talk she will give a brief introduction to Tibor Donner and the history of the Atkinson House; and talk about what it is like to like to live in a house designed by Tibor Donner, and one that has had a former life as a community house.

For a brief but golden period from 1995 to 2010, Waitakere led New Zealand in placing artists at the heart of the building of a city. Buildings and bridges, parks and playgrounds all design teams included artists and iwi. Architects were interviewed and assessed on their willingness to embrace arts/design collaboration. The result is a legacy of unique creative intervention – both functional and decorative. As arts manager for Waitakere during those years, we will take a walk through the best of the west.

How does a single artist house museum of the 20th century stay relevant to 21st century audiences?
In 2019 the McCahon House will celebrate Colin McCahon’s 100th birthday with an upgrade the visitor experience at the house museum where Colin McCahon and his family lived in the 1950’s, and where he produced some of the nation’s greatest art treasures.  Director Vivienne Stone will share how other single artist museum houses of the late nineteenth and twentieth century engage with their audiences.

Location: Titirangi Community House