The A+W NZ Timeline On Tour: Hawkes Bay

The A+W NZ Timeline is on the move - it starts its tour of the country in Hawkes Bay, at The Blyth Performing Arts Centre in Havelock North, Hawkes Bay.

When: Sunday 23^rd - Saturday 29^th September –

Times: 10am to 2pm daily.

Where: Blyth Performing Arts Centre

Iona College, Havelock North

Cost: Free

Join us for the Opening Celebration on Sunday 23 September, 10:30am.

The A+W•NZ Timeline was created in 2013 by Marianne Calvelo, with Joy Roxas (Designer) and Lynda Simmons (Curator). The original team is still working on the Timeline, with additional researchers assisting at each re-installation, including Dr Deidre Brown, Dr Lucy Treep, Ashleigh Smith and Alex Pirie.

The last installation was for the 2017 Centenary celebrations of The University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning, and saw the addition of the dark blue tiles, which show the females enrolled at the School up until 1987. (The reason for stopping at that point is that after this date the gender percentage ratio was almost equal.) It also included the addition of early Maori women who have greatly influenced the built environment, politically, socially and physically. Other additions have included Architectural Academics and women working in other fields such as Film. In 2016, the exhibition was accompanied by a sound installation made by Elisapeta Heta, using previous A+W NZ recordings of waiata and interviews.

As Dr Lucy Treep has pointed out, the display we see on the walls here offers a fresh perspective of the profession. She said that in celebrating women in the architectural community, the exhibition "adds of course to not only our knowledge of those women, but also of that community as a whole." We see that women have in fact been involved in architecture for many, many years and that they have continuously been part of the fabric of our profession, despite any social or economic barriers that may have existed.

The design of the Timeline is deliberately ‘atomised’ and additive, the incomplete nature of each panel quite literally making room for more women as more research is undertaken. There is never a complete story when it comes to any history being told about architecture. There will always be those who are overlooked or left out, as this is the nature of any sort of recording and editing. Here, the editorial lens quite simply makes women working in architecture visible.

The current Head of School at Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning, Dr Julia Gatley, has described the A+W Timeline as “…the most substantial survey of women in New Zealand architecture to date.”

We take this as a huge compliment and look forward to adding to this survey in the years to come.

The Blyth Performing Arts Centre at Iona College was designed by Stevens Lawson Architects, with Yvette Overdyck as the Project Architect and Raukura Turei as Architectural Graduate, with Design Architects Nick Stevens and Gary Lawson and Senior Technician Barry Tobin.

Thank you to The University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning and The Blyth Performing Arts Centre.

Organising Team: Alison Miranda, Hilary Finn, Lynda Simmons

Installation Team:

Alison Miranda

Amanda Roborgh

Melissa Burne

Renee Holtom

Sarah Groom

Others who gave time to support the exhibition:

Courtney Vuicakau, Pam Radburnd, Yvonne Forrest, Sara Heuser, Alex Ferguson, Ann Galloway, Jessica Kooray-Goodwin

Images by Courtney Vuicakau and Hilary Finn

A+W NZ Timeline IP Guardian: Lynda Simmons

words by Lynda Simmons