Martin Sercombe to be welcomed as Palmerston North’s second Visiting Artist for 2022

The School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication, in collaboration with Palmerston North City Council and Square Edge Community Arts, is thrilled to announce they will be hosting Martin Sercombe as the second Visiting Artist for 2022.

Mr Sercombe will spend his time in Manawatū working on two projects: the first is to develop the moving image and performance work Te Marae o Hine/The Square. The second is to deliver public animation workshops at Square Edge Community Arts Centre. In addition to these two primary projects, Sercombe will engage with Massey students, sharing his extensive career as artist filmmaker.

Te Marae o Hine/The Square will bring Mr Secombe’s skills together with those of the composer, performer, artist and researcher, Dr Jeremy Mayall. Together, they aim to produce a work that celebrates the park as a place that welcomes and embraces visitors and city dwellers of all cultures. The welcoming embrace of the park will be evoked through a densely woven choreography of the movements and activities that pass through the its spaces in one day, from dawn to nightfall. It will explore how change and movement within the park can be choreographed into an impressionistic ‘dance’, structured in ways akin to percussive, serial music. Each element in this dance will be another kinetic visual or musical gesture: a passing bike, a dog running after a ball, children playing, or students sharing an animated conversation.

Mr Sercombe has a long track record of teaching animation. Participants will learn about accessible animation software and will also get to use DSLR cameras, laptops, lighting and other animation resources. He hopes to be able to organise a public screening of the works produced.

Senior Lecturer Dr Thom Conroy is delighted that Mr Sercombe will be the 2022 Massey Visiting Artist.

“Martin’s focus on ecology and conservation feels particularly important at this moment of climate crisis, as does his experience with community-led projects. His highly collaborative approach and expertise in many different media allow him to produce works that are both accessible and challenging. Sercombe has been an ardent promoter of his medium as teacher, producer and curator of film festivals. His community animation workshops are likely to be extremely popular and we are confident that they will enrich our community both technically and artistically.”

Mr Sercombe has had a rich engagement with video both in New Zealand and abroad. As founder of the video production company, Media Projects, he has been involved in the production of documentaries, animations and training videos for charities and community groups across the world. He has taught 16mm film production and digital video production at tertiary level and has offered film making courses in galleries, libraries and community centres. His community-led projects capture a wide range of local concerns, often as seen by school children. The recent, Looking Back, Moving Forward, for example, tells the history of Titirangi Primary School, while Our World is an animated documentary made by school children in Brunei.

Mr Sercombe’s own work embraces visionary landscape work, electro-acoustic sound design and performance. His work has been screened at festivals and broadcast on television in New Zealand, USA, UK, Holland, Spain, Japan, Australia and Hong Kong. He is co-author of the teachers’ resource, The Teachers’ Animation Toolkit.