Amy Szostak to feature on TV3’s 60 Minutes

2 September 2008
A show about Lower Hutt artist Amy Szostak, whose work is currently featured in the Without Borders exhibition in Sydney, will screen on TV3’s 60 Minutes on Monday 8 September.

The show was co-produced by Alison Horwood and Belinda Walshe. “We’ve been following Amy for a year,” Alison says. “We think she’s an amazing and talented artist. Hopefully, this show captures her true spirit.”

Without Borders: Outsider art in an Antipodean context opened on 30 August at the Campbelltown Arts Centre in collaboration with Monash University. It will continue until 28 September.

Curated by Glenn Barkley and Peter Fay, it features the work of Australian, North American, British and New Zealand artists. Other New Zealand artists featured are Reese Tong, Colin Korovin and Rolf Hattaway.

Wellington curator, artist and academic Stuart Shepherd attended the opening.

"Depth of curatorial substance"

“What’s remarkable about this exhibition from a New Zealand perspective is its high level of established art and academic institutional support, and the depth of curatorial substance,” he says. “This has never happened in New Zealand and as yet, we don’t have the institutional support or doctorate level of study about New Zealand’s vernacular and contemporary folk art.

“However, that support will happen  one day, and the precedent created by this show is a signpost for future research in New Zealand.”

Stuart says that the curators have given audiences a history lesson as well as a brilliant art experience by including some of the most collectable and most-written-about outsider artists from North America – Morton Bartlet, Judith Scott and Howard Finster – and some pivotal historic outsiders such as Rolf Hattaway (New Zealand) and Alfred Wallis (Britain).
 
“The curators are deliberately and strategically legitimising contemporary self-taught artists in New Zealand and Australia by contextualising their work historically and internationally,” Stuart says. “New Zealand art is fortunate to have such passionate and alert advocates across the Tasman.

“Without Borders is an important show and I wish my students could get the chance to see work of this sensitivity, range and imagination. To experience this exhibition is to realise the immense wealth of alternative ways of knowing.”

Stuart Shepherd, who teaches at Massey University, will host a New Zealand booth at the New York Outsider Art Fair in January 2009.