KEY POINTS:
She's an addict and doesn't mind letting everyone know. Anna Miles teaches part-time at the school of art and design at AUT but she also runs her own gallery in central Auckland. And yes, she reckons she might just be addicted to art in all its forms.
Miles started off teaching and writing about art and design but when she decided "it was better to be a champion [of art] than a critic," she also opened her own gallery. That was three years ago. "I now represent a broad range of artists - from jewellers and other craftspeople to photographers to painters to video artists," she explains. "I'm really interested in work that expands the sense of what art actually is. I like the idea of art being both personal and mysterious. I like the fact that it takes you beyond the everyday world," she says.
MY 10 FAVOURITE THINGS
1. Peter Beaven's 1967 Canterbury Arcade
According to legend, Beaven was inspired by French domestic architecture. There are balconies and shutters on the High St facade and brick-filled arches inside. My gallery is a beautifully proportioned room on the fourth floor. I take it as a daily reminder to be more French: issue proper invitations and don't apologise.
2. The new Design And Decorative Arts Galleries at Auckland Museum
The fantastically dense New Zealand gallery begins with a chair made from a single whale vertebra in Russell in the 19th century. Then check out the simple pleasures of things like the Staffordshire baking dish in Landmarks, the international gallery next door.
3. Edith Amituanai's Monsieur Philemon Toleafoa, 2007.
Amituanai travelled to France to photograph Philemon, a professional rugby player, formerly of Mt Albert and now employed by the Montpellier Club. The photograph reminds me of travel, especially when your eye falls on the least likely places - like billboards en route from the airport.
4. Octavia Cook's Loved & Lost, 2006
The subjects of these plastic and sterling silver mourning brooches are the Cook family's late pets - Lucky, Gucci, Purple, Sooty and Alexander.
5. Pots of Ponsonby
It's not very Marie Antoinette but I eat my toast off a Renton Murray wood-fired plate and pour cream from his brown salt glaze jugs. These and other useful handmade things came from Pots of Ponsonby at 1970s prices. This institution is one of Auckland's few surviving craft co-operatives.
6. Morning Tea at MacGregor Brothers on the corner of Wellesley and Elliot Sts
They offer the best cheese muffins and a nice vantage point on the well-ornamented T&G Building. Auckland needs more decoration.
7. A winter coat
Nothing is more transformative than a coat. I'm romantic about winter so often find myself trying on coats in sweltering conditions and waiting for a cold day to wear one.
8. The book Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era: An Illustrated History, 1830 - 1900, by William Cottrell
This encyclopaedic insight into New Zealand material culture is crammed with photographs and watercolours of early interiors and people making things in workshops. It is an inspiring account of the mysterious, mutating world of design.
9. An early 19th-century Caucasian prayer rug
I'm crazy about textiles, weaving and rugs and this rug, from the top of the Caspian Sea, has made its way to the Waitakere Ranges via New York. With the design based on mosque architecture, this is a temple of one's own.
10. Murdoch McLennan Antiques, 377 Parnell Rd
The window displays are great, the labels are handwritten and the place is filled with covetable items.
