Programmes
Ngā wheako mā ngā Akonga Kura Tuatahi / Primary and Intermediate School Programme
All primary and intermediate school programmes are led by Gallery educators and take place in the gallery spaces, with hands-on activities in the Learning Centre when time allows. The descriptions below indicate what you can expect from each session. Please note that some programmes can be adapted for your class age group and area of focus – simply chat with our team.
gbeducation@govettbrewster.com
06 759 0858
In the Todd Energy Learning Centre
Class with Gallery educator Chris Barry
In Mikala Dwyer's exhibition Earthcraft
Shadow play with Len Lye's work
Gallery educator Rebecca Fawkner
With Mikala Dwyer's work Earthcraft
With Mikala Dwyer's work Earthcraft
In the Todd Energy Learning Centre
With Mikala Dwyer's work Earthcraft
Educator Rebecca Fawkner with students in the Learning Centre
Kaiako Jess Marshall talks with students about tukutuku patterns
Fitzroy School and Len Lye's Fountain
Primary and Intermediate
Ngā wheako o te Wāhanga 1
Term 1 learning experiences
More is more! Don’t miss the largest exhibition of the Gallery’s Collection ever shown. Launching the 50 year anniversary at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is a huge and wonderful project by NZ artist Ruth Buchanan, The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong.
With close to 300 artworks on display there’s a fantastic variety to see and learn from. The exhibition divides the Gallery into decades with treasured favourites as well as never exhibited before works. Pick a theme that works with your school programme and give your students a mega hit of creativity and inspiration.
E whai ake nei | Coming up term 2:
The history of Aotearoa/New Zealand through art
In Term 2 the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery joins the nationwide conversation around the 250th anniversary of the first onshore encounters between Māori and non-Māori, Tuia 250. Aotearoa’s history is gaining momentum in the New Zealand curriculum. This is an opportunity to build knowledge of this increasingly important area in creative ways.
We approach this topic from a local angle and are inspired by a major exhibition by the Gallery's 2019 Artist in Residence Brett Graham (Ngāti Kōroki Kahukura, Tainui). Tai Moana Tai Tangata features five new monumental sculptures with accompanying films. The exhibition upholds Te Kiwai o te Kete – the name given to the historic relationship between Taranaki and Tainui Māori – and revisits key locations in this history. The exhibition brings to light the penalties and the ongoing impact of the colonial process including Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (New Zealand Wars) and how history is written and commemorated.
The art works are poetic in nature and evoke these histories in imaginative and engaging ways. The accompanying education programme will offer choices of hands on creative programmes and give an opportunity for students to approach complex local histories through art.
To help with at-school planning a teacher resource kit will be available. Combine this exhibition with a field trip to local history sites and/or Puke Ariki Museum for a very memorable and rich learning experience. More details about this programme available in Term 1 or by request.
Being an artist
Visual Art / Social Science
7 Dec 2019 — 22 Mar 2020
Y 1 – 8, 90 mins
How can you be an artist? Take a journey through the last 50 years of artworks scooping up great art ideas and techniques to curate into personal creativity kits. Students discover each other’s points of view about art and compare and contrast approaches to artmaking. Senior students enquire why people make art, how ‘being an artist’ has changed through the decades and what the Govett-Brewster Collection tells us about New Zealand.
In the Learning Centre, the creativity kits are transformed into portable 2D/3D art galleries to take away ideas and experiments in art media and styles.
At school:
Make a classroom exhibition with your mini galleries, write an exhibition title and wall labels
Invent ‘letters to the editor’ visitor responses about the artworks in your mini gallery
Create storyboards based on artworks
Be a volunteer tour guide at the Art Gallery – bring your family to the Gallery and give them a tour
What were the favourite artworks in the exhibition? Find out more about the artists and try the techniques they use
Pacific connections
Visual Art / Social Science / Ngā Toi
7 Dec 2019 - 22 Mar 2020
Y1 – 6, 90 mins
Discover how Māori and Pasifika artists use traditional or new techniques and materials to weave together narratives of people, place and culture. What is the role and purpose of art in communities and how do art and tradition connect? What ways do art, the environment and technology link together? We zoom in on Māori and Pacific artworks in the exhibition to find out. Upcycling old technology and collecting symbols and patterns, we then head to the Learning Centre to scratch and lash our individual ideas into an old/new artwork.
At school:
Join individual artworks to display as one communal wall hanging
Find out the symbolism and structure of a whare nui, design or make own whare nui model
Experiment with materials, symbols and patterns to create an artwork that helps tell your pepeha
Make poi, add Parihaka inspired symbols, then use in kapa haka
Be a kaitiaki for the environment – create an artwork with a message to show you care
Ko Te Raranga, Ko te Poi
https://pukeariki.com/schools/education-programmes/te-toi-raranga/
Lalava (Tongan lashing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNUhQFOKVFo
Lalanga (Nuiean weaving)
https://www.thecoconet.tv/how-to/niue/how-to-weave-a-basket-niuean-style/
What is a Ghost net?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9iMKjgApEc
Ghost net art
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzw2qwutaoA
Weaving a tipare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MANbBN1enpg
Ko au tēnei / This is me
Visual Art / Social Science
7 Dec 2019 - 22 Mar 2020
Y 1 – 8, 90 mins
How can art show the who, where and when of you?
Our mission is to identify artworks within the crowd that best show a personal voice. We focus first on portraits and painting then expand our learning to artworks that tell us more about place, culture and time.
We discover the different personalities of the artworks to inspire our own. In the Learning Centre we use colours, marks and shapes with a facial feature to show emotion and finish with our own simple timeline.
At school:
Ask whānau about your past and add to your artwork
Use your artwork to write a poem or story about you and share with the class
Continue experimenting with colours and marks to show emotions
Make a class time capsule which includes predictions of the future
Public sculpture challenge
Visual Art
14 Oct – 9 Apr 2020
Y5 – 8, 60 – 120 mins
Meet a Gallery educator outside Puke Ariki Library and tour New Plymouth’s CBD to discover its sculpture gems. Student groups challenge themselves with various temporary sculptural experiments – tall, tiny, mysterious, gravity defying transformations that surprise and delight visitors.
BYO your class ipad or phone to photo students’ experiments
Ngā wheako mā ngā Akonga Kura Tuarua / Secondary School Programme
Secondary school visits to the Govett-Brewster are most successful when teachers and Gallery educators collaborate. To inspire your programme we can shape a lesson tailored specifically for your students from Year 9 +.
Secondary art teachers taking part in the Gallery schools programme consistently praise the sessions as relevant and thought provoking.
“Keep up the good work. Activities engaged students’ perceptions about visual art and oral aspects of art." - high school art teacher
Shadow play with Len Lye's work
Elizabeth Thomson's work Ants Head 1993, detail
Brittany Glassey with her 2016 Top Art folio
Students and educator Chris Barry with WharehokaSmith's Kureitanga II IV
Educator Chris Barry and students with Amanda Gruenwald's paintings. Photo Sam Hartnett
Ethan, Shawn and Liam Matuku with Tom Kreisler's Old and New
Students with Jeena Shin's painting. Photo Sam Hartnett
Secondary
Art
What can we learn from experiencing art of the last 50 years? The diversity and limitations of the collection exhibition The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong is a rare opportunity for students to make their own connections to New Zealand art. The diversity of media and subjects include drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and video, abstraction, landscape, portraits… there’s sure to be art that connects with your programme.
Exhibition themes include race and gender politics, as well as revealing why the Gallery has collected what it has in the last 50 years, and questioning what should it collect for the next 50 years.
Activities include:
Taste Test game – discover a range of responses visitors might have to artworks and why
Focus on Ngā Toi Māori – compare and contrast artists from different generations and styles
Student use art journals to write and draw their way through the exhibition
Student’s curate themselves into the exhibition – use selfies to select their hit pics on a theme of their choice
There are great cross curricular opportunities between English/History/Art/Ngā Toi. Art teachers, grab a colleague from another subject area to plan a visit.
Spaces are limited so please be in touch today, call 06 759 0858.
Whai ake nei | Coming up Term 2
Local history through art
In Term 2 the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery joins the nationwide conversation around the 250th anniversary of the first onshore encounters between Māori and non-Māori, Tuia 250. Aotearoa’s history is building momentum in the New Zealand curriculum. This is an opportunity to build knowledge of this increasingly important area in creative ways.
We approach this topic from a local angle and are inspired by a major exhibition by the Gallery's 2019 Artist in Residence Brett Graham (Ngāti Kōroki Kahukura, Tainui). The exhibition Tai Moana Tai Tangata features five new monumental sculptures with accompanying films. These revisit key locations in the early history of Taranaki and Tainui Māori, the penalties of the colonial process and the history of conflict in Taranaki.
The art works are poetic in nature and evoke these histories in imaginative and engaging ways.The accompanying education programme will offer choices of hands-on creative programmes giving students opportunities to approach complex local histories through art.
To help with at-school planning a teacher resource kit will be available for this exhibition. Combine this exhibtion with a field trip to local history sites and/or Puke Ariki Museum for a strong learning experience.
More details about this programme will be available in Term 1 or by request.
gbeducation@govettbrewster.com
06 759 0858
Te Reo Māori
Karanga atu ki a koutou ki raro i te maru o te maunga tītohea; he pou here tangata, he pou here waka, he pou here kaupapa.
Ko Jess Marshall tōku ingoa. He Pākehā ahau nō Taranaki e ngākau nui ana ki te ao Māori. Ko au te kaiako reo Māori ki te Whare Toi o Ngāmotu.
Warm greetings to you all. My name is Jess Marshall and I'm the Māori language educator at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre.
Nau mai, haere mai, rarau mai!
The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre welcomes Wharekura and Māori Studies classes to all exhibitions.
Contact Gallery kaiako Jess Marshall to discuss how visits can enhance language and hands-on learning needs.
Tuia – Tūtatakinga 250
Tuia – Encounters 250
In 2020 the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery joins the nationwide conversation in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the first onshore encounters between Māori and non-Māori. Next April our programme will be inspired by a major exhibition from the Gallery's 2019 Artist in Residence Brett Graham. Watch this space.
gbeducation@govettbrewster.com
06 759 0858
Gallery kaiako Jess Marshall and students with Maureen Lander's artworks
Learning about tukutuku patterns
Glow poi
With Para Matchitt's Whakapapa IV
With WharehokaSmith's Kureitanga II IV
Direct filmmaking
With Para Matchitt's Whakapapa IV
Kaiako Jess Marshall demonstrating
