CONTROVERSIAL artist Wayne Youle is returning to the Capital in style to take up the Rita Angus Residency.
The award has been dormant for the past two years until WelTec worked with the Thorndon Trust to resurrect it.
Youle who arrives in August, now lives north of Christchurch, but he’s a ‘Wellington boy’ at heart, grew up in Titahi Bay, and says the only distraction he will face is an ink addiction.
“Going to Roger Ingerton’s tattoo studio on Cuba Street is my vice – I’ll go back to the South Island covered [in tattoos].”
Last year he teamed up with the Cuba Street studio to ink a map of New Zealand on 100 people, including himself, for the TVNZ show New Artland.
Noted for creating provocative visual art that explores bi-cultural stereotypes and modern mind-states, Youle says he has set the bar high for the six month stay and plans a series of large scale works.
“I’ve put a lot on my plate, I’ll be back in my hood and I want to prove myself.”
Plans include a massive lego wall that can be disassembled, taxidermy, and prints related to the colonial purchase of Wellington.
“There is a huge list of the things Wellington was sold for, and for Maori people, most good things that came out of the arrival of outsiders to Aotearoa had a flip side – like guns and alcohol.”
WelTec will provide Youle access to some technology like laser cutters and CNC prototype machinery.
Hamish Tocher, of WelTec’s School of Creative Technologies, is behind the residency’s resurrection, which will be the only formal residency for a New Zealand artist in Wellington.
Tocher saw the importance of a residency for Kiwis, after Regan Gentry created the inaugural Four Plinths using WelTec’s facilities.
“Regan made the metallic Te Papa trees at WelTec, which encouraged us to make the artist arrangement more formal.
The only prerequisite for this year’s residency was a focus on culture and technology, says Tocher.
Youle will use the Rita Angus Cottage in Thorndon as his living and thinking space, and create his art at WelTec’s Petone workshops and the city campus’s digital labs.
His training as a designer has meant he has become a prolific artist.
“The work ethic that school gives you is freakish, there is so much on, I loved and lived for it”.
He’s now on the way to having his own tribe to inspire, with his son Kupa’s second birthday this week, and another baby due in the next week.
“Everyone jokes because I have Kupa tattooed on my fingers, so the next one has to have a four letter name to fit on my other hand,” he laughs.
Kupa is joining Youle, along with his mum and new sibling, for the Rita Angus Residency.
“Kupa is a pretty good dude; he’s been at the studio table in his high-chair since he was three months-old.  I talk to him like an adult – he’s a mate, none of that woowoo stuff,” Youle laughs.