Lecture series Colin McCahon: Linda Tyler

The exhibition A Place to Paint: Colin McCahon in Auckland opens on 10 August, coinciding with the centenary of Colin McCahon’s birth in August 1919. McCahon arrived in Auckland in the early 1950s to work at Auckland Art Gallery. This move and his new role started an energetic period for the artist during which he balanced a successful working life with an increasingly productive time as an artist.

The exhibition’s focus lies in the significance of Auckland City on McCahon’s development as an artist and its presence in his painting. In the accompanying lecture series McCahon: Artist, Curator, Spouse, prominent guest speakers will unpack lesser-known stories about McCahon’s life and practice.

Lecture 3, Sun 13 Oct, 10.30am–12.30pm
Linda Tyler – The Creative Life of Anne McCahon

Nurtured in New Zealand’s cultural capital Dunedin in the middle years of last century, Anne Hamblett’s success as an exhibiting artist up until the end of the Second World War resulted in the sale of paintings into private collections in Otago and Wellington. She exhibited for only three more years after marrying Colin McCahon, who was four years her junior, in 1942. Yet she continued to be creative, producing illustrations for the School Journal and learning to make ceramics. This lecture will explore the various aspects of her creative life both before and after she became Mrs McCahon.

About the speaker

Linda Tyler has taught art and design history at Canterbury, Victoria and Waikato universities and currently teaches art writing and curatorial practice at Honours level in the Art History Department at the University of Auckland, and supervises student research in the University’s Museums and Cultural Heritage programme.

Linda researched the career of Anne McCahon née Hamblett when she was Curator of Pictorial Collections at the Hocken Library in Dunedin in 2005, for the chapter “I Did Not Want to be Mrs Colin” in Deborah Shepard’s AUP book Between the Lives: Partners in Art. She curated the exhibition A Table Of One’s Own: The Creative Life Of Anne McCahon, which was on display at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in 2016/2017.

Please refer to our events page for information about the additional lectures and the guest speakers that feature within this series.

Artwork credit:
A Place to Paint: Colin McCahon in Auckland, (installation view), Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2019