WE OUT THIS HERITAGE RIVER TOWN AS ONE OF NEW ZEALAND’S SECRET CENTRES OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND DESIGN. WITH A VIBRANT ART COMMUNITY, CHEAP RENT, AND A DESIGN SCHOOL, WANGANUI EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS.

I ONCE CAME very close to Wanganui when I took a wrong turn on the drive from Wellington but rapidly bypassed the town to hit that God-forsaken highway to the Desert Road. It seems avoidance is an all too usual reaction when considering Wanganui. A shame, because this town is humming with design and art.

Wanganui, I imagined, would be a matronly, somewhat dour old lady. But Wanganui’s had a bit of a makeover in recent years. Some lifting and plumping hasn’t gone astray and this old girl’s looking fine. Blooming geraniums hang from flowerpots in the town centre, there’s a new boardwalk alongside the river, and those gang patches are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the newly spruced up Wanganui is in risk of seeming too chocolate box, a ye olde town of quaint colonial shop fronts, cosy bed-and-breakfasts and riverside strolls.

Old-fashioned she’s not. Wanganui has become a fiercely contemporary centre for arts and design. At the core of this community are three key pillars: the Sargeant Art Gallery; Universal College of Learning (UCOL); and the art glass scene. UCOL, incorporating the design school, the fashion school and the fine arts school, is one of the country’s top print and multi-media graphic design schools; which is now garnering international attention. The Sargeant Gallery is an art institution, in both senses, in New Zealand, and the centre of the furore between the art community and mayor Michael Laws over its proposed extension.

The art glass community has built up around the The Whanganui Glass School, part of UCOL. Fuelled by cheap rent, Wanganui has developed a large base of artists that are able to work here in a way they often wouldn’t be able to afford to in larger cities.

Four internationally renowned glass artists, Katie Brown, Emma Camden, David Murray and Claudia Borella, took me through their studios. The town’s creatives have repurposed heritage buildings as offices, shop fronts as galleries and workspaces, and wool-stores as studios. These interior spaces, often drawing on the prodigious second-hand shopping in town, are consistently quirky and imaginative spaces that celebrate making, colour, and ideas. Potter Ross Mitchell-Anyon’s house is a tumble of treasure troves. Craig Dalgleish’s newly completed, very contemporary house, is an example of architectural skill and rigour. And Stink Magnetic’s grungy studio and Paul McNamara’s crisp photographic gallery each describe various frames of design here.

In conversations with these artists and designers, every one described a community of collaboration and cooperation. Its a small town and, you could argue, they have little alternative to get on. Yet there was a real appreciation of varied skills and talents. This sense of community has possibly been strengthened with an us-versus-them mentality, the ‘them’ centring on Michael Laws, the town’s combative mayor. I interviewed Mr Laws. He is a significant part of the cultural landscape in Wanganui. I figured the media doyen would honey-coat his infamously divisive views. I was naive. Most memorably, he said, “I regard installation art as a mental illness not as a form of art.” Perhaps Wanganui does have something to worry about.