Milly Mitchell-Anyon to open Swine Gallery in old bacon factory

Milly Mitchell-Anyon in front of 'Happy Hour', her first exhibition at Swine Gallery. Photo / Bevan Conley

Art curator and critic Milly Mitchell-Anyon had planned on moving to the United States this year, but after the outbreak of the global Covid-19 pandemic, any overseas plans were quickly shelved.

America's loss is Whanganui's gain though because she is set to open Swine, her new art space, this Saturday.

"I'd also just completed my Masters in Art History at Victoria University in Wellington, and I came back here (Whanganui) for a couple of months off," Mitchell-Anyon said.

"Then lockdown happened and America was off the cards, and I didn't know what the art sector would look like at the end of all of this (Covid-19). I decided to just do my own thing, and then this place became available.

"It's a space for me as a writer and practitioner, to work from, as well as a gallery. I can produce stuff in one part, and keep working on things as I go in the other part."

Her first exhibition, 'Happy Hour', features photographs taken throughout Whanganui by her great uncle Peter Tizard in the 1990s. A grant from Creative New Zealand enabled Mitchell-Anyon to digitise 6200 negatives in Tizard's photographic collection, with 10 photos being chosen for the final exhibition.

"All Peter did was take photographs all day," Mitchell-Anyon said.

"He was disabled (in a wheelchair) after a car crash in his twenties and didn't have a job.

"What I really like about the photos, and what makes them slightly different, is their incredible height. He's always kind of looking up, and it's the same kind of height as Ans Westra's work because she holds her camera at her waist. "

Mitchell-Anyon said it was hard to pick only ten photos for the exhibition, as she had "300 favourites".

"I think the ones I chose represent a snippet of each kind of theme throughout the whole collection.

"There are a lot of self-portraits in mirrors of him in his wheelchair, but there are also a lot of pictures of stairs. It's this massive physical barrier, and it recognises his disability because he couldn't get up them.

"He was in quite a few Sarjeant (Gallery) shows, but he couldn't actually go to them because he couldn't get up the stairs."

The name of the gallery is a tribute to the bacon factory that was at 37 Taupō Quay in days gone by.

"If you go into the internal room here it still smells like smokey bacon, it's embedded into the walls," Mitchell-Anyon said.

"All the walls have got marks where the smoking and drying racks used to be, and the space here (the front of Swine) is the driveway where the pigs would be brought."

Prior to returning to Whanganui, Mitchell-Anyon worked at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in Masterton, and the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt.

"For me, the whole thing about being a good curator is picking up ideas that are quite current and prevalent in our society. A good curator is able to bring those ideas out and tie them all together.

"It's a skill that doesn't really get taught in school or at university, so it's a bit of a strange path to get there.

I guess the way I went about it was to get an Arts History degree. I went too and from university, but I've had enough of that now.

"It's time to do some practice for a while. It's like being an artist, you have to keep going at it."

*'Happy Hour' will be open to the public on Saturday, November 28 at 37 Taupō Quay.