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Education briefs
Creative expansion
The Miramar Creative Centre has opened as a new Victoria University of Wellington campus. Master of Design Technology students have already moved in and, by November, students from the film and music streams of the university’s Master of Fine Arts (Creative Practice) will join them. Victoria has always had a close connection with Weta Digital and Weta Workshop, and the centre marks a new partnership with Miramar Creative Ltd whose directors Jamie Selkirk and Kristy Grant have supported the hightech teaching centre.
Lusk’s legacy
Award-winning Waitati ceramicist and Dunedin School of Art (DSA) graduate, Kate Fitzharris, has won the 2017 Doris Lusk Ceramics Residency – a two-week teaching residency at Risingholme Community College in Christchurch. The biannual residency is named for painter and ceramicist, Doris Lusk, who grew up in Dunedin, studied at the DSA and taught pottery at Risingholme Community College. “Teachers often say they learn from their students, and I am looking forward to enquiry and open dialogue,” says Fitzharris.
Currency exchange
Matt Arbuckle is the winner of this year’s Wallace Arts Trust Vermont Award with Mining for Bitcoins. The prize is a threemonth residency at the Vermont Studio Centre in the USA. Arbuckle described his work as referring to the practice of earning cryptocurrency by verifying transactions and adding them to the public ledger. Designed to secure the network, the process requires immense computing power. “I read an article on Bitcoin mining while making this painting and became fascinated,” he said. Arbuckle graduated from Unitec in Auckland in 2009 with a Bachelor of Visual Communication.