Creative talents honoured at new Hall of Fame
massey-university
Tue Oct 09 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Creative talents honoured at new Hall of Fame
Tuesday, 9 October 2007, 10:53 am
Press Release: Massey University
Monday, October 9, 2007
Creative talents honoured at new Hall of Fame
Three creative New Zealanders will be honoured next month at a new College of Creative Arts Hall of Fame at the University.
The inaugural inductees are Richard Taylor, Director of Weta Workshop; New York based fashion designer Rebecca Taylor; and (posthumously) sculptor and filmmaker Len Lye.
The Hall of Fame will recognise students and staff of the College, and its forerunner institutions, who have made outstanding contributions to New Zealand’s economy, reputation and national identity through art and design, says Dr Claire Robinson, head of the Institute of Communication Design.
“Their remarkable achievements will be honoured at a black-tie dinner in the Museum Building on Massey’s Wellington Campus on 2 November,” Dr Robinson says.
“For more than 120 years, as the School of Art, Wellington Technical College, the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, and now the Massey University College of Creative Arts, we have educated some of New Zealand’s best designers and artists.
“For most of this time we have been understated about our successes. This is fairly typical of designers who prefer to work behind the scenes rather than steal the limelight. This has all changed with the decision to launch a College of Creative Arts Hall of Fame.”
Richard Taylor studied at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design from 1984–1986. He founded and directs the visual and physical effects companies Weta Workshops and Weta Digital with his wife Tania Rodger, Peter Jackson and Jamie Selkirk. He is a five-time Academy Award winner for his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, and his work features in many feature films, television programmes and video games.
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Rebecca Taylor studied Fashion Design at Wellington Polytechnic in the late 1980s. She moved to New York where she first worked as an assistant for Cynthia Rowley before developing her own label. In 2000 she opened her flagship store in Japan, and has been a fixture on the international runway circuit ever since. Her clothes are worn by television and movie stars including Cameron Diaz, Uma Thurman, Reese Witherspoon, Ashley Judd, Sarah Jessica Parker and Julia Stiles.
Len Lye studied at the Wellington Technical College in its commercial course from 1915–16 and in its drawing and art evening courses between 1918 and 1921. He went on to become an experimental film-maker, poet, painter, kinetic sculptor, and one of New Zealand's most widely-known modernist artists.
His sculptures are found in the collections of major art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as on the waterfronts of New Plymouth and Wellington. He died in 1980.
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