About us

Rob Garrett Contemporary Fine Art (RGCFA) is an art management and consultancy company committed to arts development, innovation and excellence in the visual arts. We provide advisory services and practical hands-on support to artists, arts businesses and not-for-profits, government and public sector organisations, arts lovers and others in the arts sector.

We make the complex simple

Our extensive experience in the visual arts and specialist knowledge resources ensure that we can assist with every aspect of your project – from complete end-to-end management, through to refining touches. Our flexible, consultative structure ensures you have the expert advice you need exactly when and how you need it.

When to use us

When you need specialist knowledge in any area of the visual arts

When you require independent and impartial advice on any aspect of contemporary art

When you need assistance managing the logistics of any visual arts project

When you need an international perspective on the development of any visual arts project

Our work includes

• Arts project management and commissioning:
• Commissioning brief development / refinement
• Opportunity matching for artists
• Budgets
• Liaison between artists and commissioners
• Site-selection and artist-selection advice and support
• Project management
• Audience development and engagement
• Curating public art projects and exhibitions
• Policy review, development, writing
• Writing and speaking (articles, catalogue essays, exhibition reviews, floor talks, forums)
• Communications (arts PR, media and marketing)
• Services for artists:
• Training and career development
• Business strategy development
• Providing skilled studio assistants (on-call)
• Opportunity identification
• Research:
• Sector and stakeholder consultations (interviews, surveys, focus groups)
• Preparing background documents
• Identifying examples of best practice
• Public art feasibility studies (sites, artist-selection, gifts)
• Recruitment services and advice for organisations seeking arts professionals

We have worked with...

Artspace Auckland (NZ Venice Project Speculation, 2007)
Auckland Art Fair Trust
Auckland Arts Regional Trust and The Big Idea Trust (the ART Venture Programme)
Auckland City Council – Arts Policy, Arts Services and Strategic Development
Auckland Festival Trust
Bay of Plenty Polytechnic School of Education & Humanities
Chartwell Trust
City Art Rooms Project Trust
Cooper and Company (Britomart development precinct, Auckland)
Corban Estate Arts Centre
Creative New Zealand and Fuel4Arts
Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust
Enjoy Public Art Gallery Wellington
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
LITMUS Research Initiative (Massey University School of Fine Arts)
New Zealand Post Group
New Zealand Sculpture OnShore 2008
Numerous individual artists
St Paul Street Gallery AUT Auckland
Standing Ovation
Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) Department of Media Arts
Wellington City Council Public Art Panel
Wellington Institute of Technology (Weltec) Centre for Creative Industries
Various dealer galleries

We write for…

Art Fairs International
Art New Zealand
Art News New Zealand
Art World
Art+Object Auction House
Artists Alliance ArtAll
Artlink Australia
Ceramics: Art and Perception
Heritage New Zealand Magazine
Metro Magazine

Read our articles here…

What others say

Featured project
New artwork puts heritage in the spotlight at Britomart

John Radford, Lux Flux 2008, interactive light-based installation, 200 LED lights and incandescent bulbs, dimensions variable (Britomart, Auckland)

Lux Flux consists of 200 small, clear LED lights and incandescent bulbs scattered across the façade of Old Sofrana House, one of the 18 heritage buildings being preserved as part of the Britomart urban renewal project.

At night, pedestrian movements through the precinct trigger the lights, causing them to flicker across the 110-year-old façade in a seemingly random 15-second sequence.

Designed to highlight the grand old building’s architectural features, the work is a commentary on the importance of architecture to provide continuity in a world of constant change.

“While Old Sofrana House has stayed more or less the same over the decades, the light moving over it has been subject to constant shifts and changes,” says Radford. “Each moment of illumination in the artwork is like a tiny snapshot of a moment in the building’s history.”

The work is installed on the Galway Street façade at the rear of the building, which overlooks Station Plaza behind the Britomart Transport Centre. Its trigger points are located opposite Old Sofrana House, near the volcanic cone water feature in Station Plaza, and further away outside the Northern Steamship Co BrewBar & Restaurant on the corner of Gore and Tyler Streets.

Lux Flux is the first of an ongoing programme of public artworks that will be featured throughout the Britomart precinct during the development process and beyond. Future projects will be co-commissioned by Cooper and Company and RGCFA Ltd. RGCFA Ltd also provides curatorial expertise and art management.

Artist: John Radford
Title: Lux Flux
Date: 2008
Media: 200 clear LED lights and incandescent bulbs, wiring, adhesives, movement sensors
Dimensions: Variable
Commissioners: Cooper and Company
Curator: RGCFA Ltd
Project art management: RGCFA Ltd
Location: Old Sofrana rear façade, Galway Street, Britomart, Auckland CBD, New Zealand
Duration: approximately 2 years

Enquire here for more information…

Featured resources
Public art: How to get into it…

Public art is an exciting activity to be involved in. Opportunities are growing as Councils and private developers begin to see public art’s potential to signify creativity and innovation, and create a sense of pride and identity. The public arena is one of endless possibility – there are no gallery walls to limit your ideas, and you can potentially reach many more people than would visit a gallery. There are many reasons to get involved in public art but there are also some barriers.

Our useful article will tell you how to get involved in public art and how to overcome the many challenges.

Who is this article useful for? This article is for artists, councils and other wanting to be involved in public art projects.

When to use this article:

When you want to know how to hear about opportunities

When you want to know how to get considered for public art opportunities

When you want to know how to deal with the complexity of public art projects

When you want to know how to get experience in public art when you can’t get a commission without experience

When you want to know whether to send a proposal or a portfolio

Get started today. Simply download our informative article and helpful ‘tips sheet’ here…

Enquire here for more information…

This article was first published in ArtAll: Artists Alliance Magazine, Issue 91, August/September 2008, pp18-19.

Public art policy: How to get it right…

Auckland City Council sought our help when they wanted to take a comprehensive look at their public art activities and their role in supporting, commissioning and legislating for public art in Auckland. We were asked to provide advice on council policy, processes, funding and organisational structure. Council was seeking improvements that would better align their public art programme with best practice and their vision for Auckland city.

Auckland City Council faced a number of challenges:

• Public art activity had grown significantly
• There were increasing demands and opportunities for public art
• The changed environment had highlighted the need for a more strategic and integrated approach to planning and delivery of public art projects
• Capacity and the level of resources required to manage public art effectively were stretched

Our work included in-depth arts sector and stakeholder consultations (through interviews, artist forums and advisory groups), best practice research, baseline data gathering and analysis, and the identification of issues and solutions. The project drew on our long experience in the visual arts, our expertise in leading and managing complex art projects, our ability to translate across different values and language cultures (for instance between the art world and the regulatory environment of council), our strategic thinking, and our ability to understand the complexities of political and community stakeholder environments.

The review was completed in 2008 and council asked for our continued assistance with planning the implementation of the new structures. During this phase our work included preparing work-in-progress background reports; writing policy and management guidelines; undertaking further research on suitable funding models; assisting with recruitment; and advising on site-selection and artist-selection for ongoing public art projects.

Art in public places: Auckland City Council’s public art policy was released in August 2008.

Download Auckland City Council’s public art policy document here…

Enquire here for more information…

Our People

Director – Rob Garrett

Rob Garrett has more than 30 years experience in the visual arts (as artist, educator, writer, curator and arts manager) and has long experience especially in commissioning artist projects, and in curating and project managing public art projects and installations by a wide range of visual artists.

Garrett is currently a member of Wellington City Council’s Public Art Panel, and is a founding member of the Venice Foundation Working Party which is working to establish a New Zealand Venice Foundation to ensure the country’s continued presence at this most prestigious of international art events. He recently led Auckland City Council’s public art review. He is curating the 2008 biennial outdoor sculpture exhibition NZ Sculpture OnShore which raises funds for NZ Women’s Refuges and will include works by more than 100 artists; and is curator of special projects for the Auckland Art Fair in 2009.

Previously he was a senior manager with Creative New Zealand, New Zealand’s Arts Council, where led the artist / curator selection process and was the project team leader for New Zealand’s presentation at the 2005 Venice Biennale (et al’s the fundamental practice). In 2007 he project managed Speculation, New Zealand’s unofficial presentation of 30 artists, selected by 8 curators at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

From 1999 to 2002 Garrett was Head of the Dunedin School of Art. He founded the school’s contemporary art theory programme and its international Artist Residency programme Artists at Work. Between 1993 and 2002 under Garrett’s artistic direction the residency programme included new work commissions and exhibitions and / or temporary site-specific public installations by Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante (USA), Su Xinping (China), Su Grierson (Scotland), Ed Osborn (USA), Anne Ferran (Australia), Richard Crow (UK), Margaret Roberts (Australia), Gisela Genthner (Germany), Georganne Deen (USA), Ruth Hadlow (Australia), Adrian Hall (Australia) and Roger Palmer (Scotland). He also co-founded, with Ngai Tahu, the school’s residency programme aimed at developing Ngai Tahu’s young visual artists.

Garrett also initiated and founded Dunedin’s Otago Festival of the Arts, a boutique arts festival for a boutique city. He trained as an artist and has a fine arts degree from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University, and a post-graduate degree in Art History from Otago University.

His passion for the arts includes frequent travel overseas to keep up-to-date and maintain the company’s networks; regular articles and reviews on contemporary art; and collecting the works of emerging artists.

Amanda Wayers

Amanda Wayers is a curator, writer and art project manager for RGCFA. She is currently Assistant Curator for the NZ Sculpture OnShore 2008 exhibition, and is working alongside emerging artists to develop public artworks for Auckland, including a series of large-scale outdoor paintings in the Britomart development precinct in Auckland’s CBD. Wayers is passionate about developing new public art opportunities and facilitating world-class, internationally informed public art.

Before joining our team in 2007, Wayers had curated exhibitions for The Dowse Art Gallery, recently renamed TheNewDowse (Lower Hutt), and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington), and worked as Curator and Acting Director at Lopdell House Gallery in Waitakere City (Auckland). Wayers completed her Museum Studies Masters thesis on artists’ collective et al. in early 2007.

During her time with RGCFA Wayers has worked on several high-profile art projects, including our review of Auckland City Council’s public art activities, and Lux Flux, a light artwork by John Radford, commissioned by Cooper and Company for the Britomart development precinct

Building on her experiences in developing city-wide programmes of events and exhibitions in Waitakere and her consultancy work Wayers has become skilled at managing relationships between a variety of not-for-profit, charity and Council stakeholders, including Tangata Whenua. In 2005 Wayers developed Nga Maunga Toi o Matariki, an exhibition and sell-out programme of events for Matariki in Waitakere City, in partnership with Rewi Spraggon. She worked closely with the resident iwi at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, to develop the exhibition Settling In (2002). Wayers also coordinated the popular 2004 Portage Ceramic Awards and accompanying Auckland-wide Season of Ceramics events.

Wayers has written for Art World, Art New Zealand and Metro magazines and several exhibition catalogues. She has a Masters in Museum and Heritage Studies (with Distinction) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Art History, both from Victoria University (Wellington), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UCOL (Wanganui).

David Scholefield

David Scholefield is Installation Team Leader for RGCFA. He is presently project managing the installation of more than 100 sculptures on an outdoor site for the NZ Sculpture OnShore 2008 Exhibition with logistical simplicity and efficiency. He is a recent re-patriate, returning home to New Zealand after 20 years living and working in London. He was educated in New Zealand at Auckland School of Architecture and Elam School of Fine Arts.

In 1986 Scholefield formed a London-based production company Artcell that evolved into Grasshopperstudiolondon in early 2007. The companies provided management and production design services to arts and media organisations in London. Projects were realised in the UK, Europe and USA.

Scholefield’s principal client in London was the arts commissioning organisation Artangel. Artangel specialises in developing one-off site specific projects with UK and international artists. Locations for this work were mostly in non-art spaces, and ranged from decommissioned underground stations, a London double-decker bus, former cinemas and decaying industrial buildings, to hospitals and lighthouses. Scholefield has also co-produced media events for Channel 4 Television and worked with public relations team Bolton & Quinn for clients Tate Galleries, Norman Foster Associates, The Clore Foundation and London City Hall – projects which included the press launches for Tate Modern and Norman Foster’s Millennium Bridge.

David Scholefield worked with artists Matthew Barney, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Rachel Whiteread, Steve McQueen, Scanner, William Forsythe, Douglas Gordon, Robert Wilson, Hans Peter Kuhn, Michael Clark, the Kabakovs, Neil Bartlett, John Berger, Simon McBurney, Siobhan Davies, Deborah Bull, Jem Finer, Shirin Nishat, and others. In 2001 Scholefield project managed Madrid artist Juan Munoz’s installation Double Bind, the second in theUnilever series commissioned for Tate Modern’s huge Turbine Hall.