About
The C Art Trust

Unique opportunity to support contemporary artists

A unique vehicle to support Aotearoa contemporary artists is available through the C Art Trust which co-ordinates a group of patrons to provide an award of $55,000 to support a mid-career contemporary artists for a period of 12 months.

Patrons are invited to contribute $3,500 to support the C Art Trust Award of $55,000. As the C Art Trust is a registered charity under the Charities Act 2005, patrons are eligible for a tax credit.

Those interested in becoming patrons for the Award can contact the Trust at info@carttrust.nz

The award responds to the fact that our contemporary artists are creatively rich but time poor. The small size of the market, the buying patterns of collectors and cost of materials mean that contemporary artists frequently need other jobs and have insufficient time to experiment and advance their practice.

For the artist, the award provides the time and space for artistic exploration and experimentation. It frees them up from paid employment so that they can focus time and energy on their projects allowing them to develop a new body of work to show and sell commercially. This has proved the case for all previous awardees: Jeena Shin, Andrew Barber, Anoushka Akel, Georgie Hill, and Christina Pataialii. The Trust offers an opportunity for interested patrons to join what is now an established, successful and notable feature of the contemporary art scene in New Zealand.

For this forthcoming iteration the Trust has selected Salome Tanuvasa as its awardee. The award to Salome is made with the assistance of curator Hanahiva Rose and gallerist Tim Melville. Hanahiva is currently Te Papa's Contemporary Art Curator and a doctoral candidate in Art History at Victoria University. She has previously curated exhibitions for Te Papa, National Library of New Zealand, Te Uru, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and Enjoy Art Gallery. Hanahiva is a widely published writer, contributing to exhibition catalogues and arts publications in Aotearoa and internationally.

This is what Hanahiva Rose wrote about Salome –

"Salome Tanuvasa’s thoughtful and evocative paintings explore the qualities of form and colour. Using fluid, confident gestures, Tanuvasa abstracts details of everyday life: her parent’s East Auckland garden, tapa and fine mats from the family collection. “My paintings communicate an intuitive sense of the places where I find joy – in my home and with my family,” she says. I have been familiar with Tanuvasa’s practice for some time and was particularly struck by her recent paintings for their engagement with histories of European modernism. With determined vitality, Tanuvasa’s paintings offer a contemporary Pacific response to abstract painting traditions, locating themselves firmly in her culture and community while looking out towards the wider world. Her work follows the possibilities of a line, a mark: their capacity to repeat, evolve and carry us through time and space."

Salome Tanuvasa is represented by Tim Melville Galleryand the Trust wishes to thank Tim Melville for his support and assistance.

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Tim Melville (Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Atiawa) opened his Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland gallery Tim Melville Gallery in 2007.

Tim’s exhibition programme supports a roster of emerging, mid-career and senior artists from Aotearoa New Zealand, the Pacific and Australia.

As one of the few Māori gallerists in Aotearoa he is particularly interested in championing indigenous artists’ work, and he has become known for introducing artists from remote Australian Aboriginal communities to new audiences on this side of the Tasman.

As the art world moves away from traditional Eurocentric points of view, and as acknowledgements are made regarding indigenous attitudes towards whenua(Aotearoa) and country (Australia), Tim Melville’s kaupapa is increasingly focussed on exploring some of their meeting points.

Why become a patron?

Painting is easy when you don’t know how but very difficult when you do.

This ironic sentence, attributed to the French artist Edgar Degas, alludes to the serious nature of art making and the effort and time needed to develop an artist’s practice. It gestures to a dilemma shared both by artists and collectors. The C Art Trust award enables the awarded artist to create a substantial body of work over a period of 12 months.

For contributing patrons, The C Art Trust provides a unique path to engage with the practice of a promising mid-career contemporary artist. The Trust organizes a patron’s programme, providing opportunities to engage with the awarded artist during the year of their award. Thus the venture has valuable educational and social aspects. Patrons can develop their appreciation and enjoyment of contemporary art in conversations with the artist, curators, galleries and fellow patrons.

How The C Art Trust affects the growth of contemporary art market

The contemporary art collector is as important a part of a vibrant contemporary art community as are public and private galleries, curators and artists. A responsive audience, which appreciates the thinking involved in the making and viewing of contemporary art, has the potential to grow public and private gallery audiences for contemporary art generally. The C Art Trust plays a part in building a wider audience for contemporary art by connecting that audience with artists and galleries who can guide viewers in ways of looking at, appreciating and responding to contemporary art. Such an opportunity enables patrons to gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of contemporary art practice and, in particular, New Zealand contemporary art.

The key concepts are:

Fostering the connection between a community of patrons, artists and galleries
Providing financial support to an artist over a 12 month period
Creating an opportunity for artists to further their practice
Stimulating an interest in collecting contemporary art through connecting people to the private gallery sector, which in turn contributes substantially to the development of artists.