Seresin Landfall Residency 2010

Alongside Otago University Press, we are delighted to announce New Zealand writer and curator Wystan Curnow as the winner of the second Seresin Landfall Residency.

Wystan Curnow is a writer, curator, editor and educator who has worked in the arts for 40 years, publishing 30 books and numerous articles, reviews and poems.

He will spend the six-week residency in Tuscany working on a book on prominent New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. Wystan says 'it is taking a bit of time to sink in - you don't count on such outcomes.'

Michael Seresin says the quality of the 2010 applicants made a final decision very difficult, however he felt it was important to support Wystan Curnow's latest work.

'The project that Mr Curnow is working on has an enormous amount of merit, not least because Colin McCahon is such a pivotal figure in New Zealand art. I believe we should contribute anything we can to get this work completed.'

Mr Curnow says 'McCahon was a friend of my family, my mother especially. As a secondary school art student I was selected for an advanced class at the Auckland City Art Gallery, taught partly by McCahon. As a university student I hung out with him at the Gallery and in the pub after work.'

Curnow adds 'my writing and curating of McCahon work is notable for shifting attention to his later language-based works at a time when his landscape work was preferred by most critics, and for introducing McCahon to an international audience first in Australia and later in Europe.'

For more information about Mr Curnow and the 2010 Seresin Landfall Residency, please visit our website.