Ten for tomorrow
By Bette Flagler,
Idealog September/October 2007, page 40. Photographs by Alistair Guthrie
We know you’re clever but you won’t live for ever—and we have to look out for New Zealand’s creative future. So Idealog placed calls to the established stars of Kiwi creativity and asked them to nominate our future fame bearers. tracks down ten of the best and captures them while they’re still fresh-faced
We love celebrating Kiwi achievers. So early in the development of Idealog we decided we wanted to have a regular section of the magazine devoted to up-and-coming creative New Zealanders. The Emerging Talent section has quickly become one of the most popular parts of the magazine and so far we’ve covered a diverse bunch of inspiring people working in fashion, science, design, music, art, advertising and TV, and even a nut designer.
Now, we’d like to introduce a whole gang of emerging Kiwis. In this story, we profile ten hotshot talents who aren’t household names. Most weren’t known to us either—to select them, we pulled together a diverse team of well-known Kiwi mentors who are familiar with struggle and success, and asked them to nominate their most inspiring up-and-comers. They all did; it’s thanks to these leaders that this list can be assembled.
Once we received the nominations, we whittled them down to a manageable number and then went back to some of our team of over-achievers for further discussion.
And what a list! For a writer, it’s bittersweet when an editor assigns a story like this. On one hand, it’s an honour to meet creative minds before they make their major mark, before their brand is global, before they have megabucks or an international reputation. To spend time with those who will shape our world? What a thrill.
On the downside is the realisation that if I’ve been asked to write about the next greatest thing, well, it’s obvious: I’m not in the running. [Next year, Bette. –Ed.]
You’ll see a few grey hairs represented in this story. Not many, but a few. At 45, scientist Rod Dunbar is the oldest of our group. That’s okay; in certain careers—science being one—it takes longer to shine than in others. We were quite proud when Steve West was nominated—Idealog wrote about his company a year ago, but his story is certainly cool enough to visit again.
We’ve limited our list to those currently working here. Photographer Marti Friedlander is enthusiastic about celebrating the emerging minds in the creative industries and she wanted to put forth a young Kiwi photographer. “But he’s gone to New York—where he’ll do very well,” Friedlander says. “That’s what happens with these bright young things. They go off to explore the world.”
Indeed they do. But many of these bright young things have gone out to see the world and come back better for the experience. And several, including Katie Lockhart, Valerie Parkes, Michael Davis and Steve West, have received more acclaim overseas than they have at home.
For some, the path hasn’t been easy. Greg Broadmore spent so much time on the dole that he was assigned his own case worker; Valerie Parkes had a false start in languages before she found the peace of weaving; and Daniel Robertson upset the family when he decided to drop out of university after years of study.
They all have their stories and I liked seeing how their creativity doesn’t respect boundaries: a scientist who is a pianist; a stylist who is learning to write; an architect who embraces software. These are frighteningly interesting people.
“How do you define ‘talent’?” asked Friedlander. For that matter, she asked, how do you define ‘emerging’?
I’m not sure about either, but we went looking for people who were not only talented, but who also stood out for the clever application of their talent. We wanted emerging, but with at least some real-life success (in some cases, that has been critical success). We wanted to spotlight future leaders who have been noticed by their peers as being clever and who have shown they can learn from the people around them. These are not people who exist in a bubble nor are they socially dysfunctional. They are individuals who find value in giving back; Greg Broadmore at Weta mentors young artists, for example.
Always following a process is not typically the way to the front of the line, so we looked for those who are not afraid to follow their intuition even if it means upsetting the proverbial apple cart—Michael Davis comes to mind. None of the people are limited by the borders of New Zealand; they know that we are part of a bigger world and they all have a global perspective. They are not afraid of people who look, sound or think differently.
These people have the capacity to surprise. They are the ones who frighten you, the ones you hire because you know they will be better than you are.
Last, but not least, they couldn’t be jerks. They’re people who inspire others.
You may sense some conflict of interest as some of our emerged chose emerging people from within their organisations. Do not be alarmed: Sharon Henderson listed a number of up-and-comers from her agency, DDB New Zealand, and others. But when we scoured the list, we liked Christie Cooper best. We liked her sense of humour, her honesty and the fact that she has two small children and a partner who does the housework.
Likewise, Richard Taylor named members of his team at Weta Workshop as well as some from other studios. But we couldn’t look past Greg Broadmore. Who could? He’s amazing.
So here’s to our ten talented treasures. We’re proud to tell you their stories and celebrate their success—now and in the future.
Marti Friedlander cautions that celebrity can be a bit of a burden. For that, we apologise.
Greg Broadmore
Greg Broadmore says his brain engages at noon. That’s probably good; it’s frightening to think how much he’d accomplish if it started in the morning.
Broadmore, 35, is a conceptual designer, illustrator and sometime sculptor at Weta Workshop, where he’s worked on King Kong, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I, Robot, Black Sheep and two projects currently on hold: Evangelion and Halo. That would keep most people busy but in his spare time Broadmore created Dr Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators, better known on the Internet as Weta’s steampunk rayguns. The high-end collectibles featured in Wired magazine and are the most popular item on the Weta online store.
Growing up in Whakatane, Broadmore loved drawing but never gave a great deal of thought to a career. He spent seven years on the dole, wandering around New Zealand, playing in punk bands and drawing comics. He learned a lot about sound engineering, music and art, until his unemployment benefit ended during an “ugly” disagreement with his case worker.
But synchronicity struck: The Lord of the Rings was just starting and Broadmore couldn’t believe people were making a fantasy movie right in Wellington. He sent his folio to the studio, Richard Taylor loved it and suddenly Broadmore had a real job and a regular income.
Taylor’s punt has paid off. “Greg’s incredible talent and technical drawing skills allow him to realise the crazy fantasies that bounce around his head every moment of his waking life,” he says.
Broadmore, meanwhile, is still surprised that he has a real job.
Michael Davis
Michael Davis left New Zealand, earned his master’s degree at the Architectural Association in London and then went to Amsterdam to work for five years. Now he’s back.
“Kiwis who have gone away and come back have a unique perspective on what to do here,” says architect Mario Madayag. “They have a different worldview and adapt that to this country and push things along. They raise the bar.”
In Holland, Davis worked on a variety of projects, from urban schemes to the reactivation of a dry dock. These days he lectures at Auckland University and has an architecture and urban design research practice called Molasses. He describes his work as a meshing of diagram-based Dutch rationalism and contemporary digital processing. “Rather than being a person who designs something with a masterstroke,” he says, “the architect designs the system, controls the input and edits the output.”
Davis, 35, wants to focus on digital design, fabrication and strategy. “As soon as you start talking like that, you see people’s eyes glaze over because it’s not a discourse that has any resonance in New Zealand,” he says. “We’re only starting to bring to the university [the idea that] design is research and research is design.”
His dream brief? The Auckland tank farm. If it were in Holland, he says, a master architect would assemble a team of emerging practices to work on the project. Ideas, enthusiasm and experience are a powerful combination.
Christie Cooper
While many advertising creatives are still at the agency late into the night, Christie Cooper, mother of two (18 months and brand new), is not. She’s home with her kids.
Cooper has always been a creative sort but didn’t really know what she was getting into when she went to Axis Ad School. “I just thought it looked like fun,” she says.
At DDB New Zealand she works for lots of different clients, including Volkswagen, Sky TV, Cadbury and AMI. DDB managing director Sharon Henderson reckons Cooper, 24, has creative director potential: “Christie is in an industry with a lot of egos trying to make a name for themselves. Christie is quite modest, though, and motivated by the work she does as opposed to the glory of the role.”
Cooper has been well-recognised for her work: internationally, she’s been a finalist at the Cannes Lions Festival, the Clio Awards, AWARD, the One show and the Caxton Awards. She’s won two bronze Rising Tide awards and at home she’s collected silver and bronze Axis awards. In 2004, she and her then-design partner Jay Tamati won a CAANZ Emerging Talent award for a laugh-out-loud Tonka ad.
“I like trying to come up with different, original ideas,” she says. “I really like coming up with funny stuff.”
She may be funny, but Henderson calls her a great thinker and ambidextrous. “She started as an art director and is starting to explore the writing side. That really makes her one to watch.”
But there are no shortcuts. “The best thing you can do,” says Cooper, “is work as much as you can. The more you work on a brief, the better your ideas. The first few are sometimes good but generally it just takes heaps of work.”
Sarah Adams + Matt Backler
“A lot of people leave school and are described as having raw talent,” says designer Peter Haythornthwaite, but husband-and-wife team Sarah Adams and Matt Backler have something extra. “They both have maturity in their work” and, says Haythornthwaite, they also have that elusive X-factor. “I expect to see a lot from them.”
Growing up in Tauranga, Adams, 24, was a sports enthusiast who thought she’d get into physiotherapy. But when an art teacher asked a leading question—“What do you find interesting?”—the answer was design books and magazines, and industrial design soon became the focus. Adams caught Haythornthwaite’s eye when he was a visiting tutor at Victoria and she was working on a fully-glassed round refrigerator for the Design Led Futures programme.
As a youngster on the Kapiti Coast, Backler admits to being a modelling enthusiast who when he wasn’t putting things together was pulling them apart. Aged nine or ten, he was building tree forts, carts and helicopters. Looking back, he says, the things he built all used similar design processes. Backler did a stint at Design Mobel and now splits his time between Fisher & Paykel’s Mosgiel design offices and nearby Perreaux, the high-end audio manufacturer.
Adams describes Backler, 27, as being able to think about design in a well-rounded manner. “He’s logical in his approach.” Backler, on the other hand, admires Adams’ appreciation of the smaller details of design. “She is analytical and systematic,” he says. “She is able to see the whole of design as a process.”
Valerie Parkes
She’s been described as the best kete weaver in the country, but Valerie Parkes gets her pleasure from the process. “Traditional basket weaving is good for the soul,” she says. “It requires perseverance and patience.”
Parkes, 43, was born in Rotorua and completed a four-year diploma course in Maori Craft and Design at Waiariki Polytechnic in 1991. It was there she discovered an affinity for weaving. Later, she briefly studied with master weaver Diggeress Rangituatahi Te Kanawa. “I feel fortunate to be shown these skills and to be able to further the craft of Maori weaving,” she says. “I don’t have Maori blood, so it’s even more of a privilege.”
Most of her weaving is done at the dining room table but she displays at Auckland’s FHE Gallery. Owner Kathleen Fogarty is effusive: “There is an intake of breath when you see her work,” she says. “The quality of her making and the fineness of her craftsmanship are spectacular. In a letter Diggeress wrote about Valerie, she expressed admiration not only for her skill, but also for her intense commitment.”
But when Parkes sees ‘Digger’s’ work, she is humbled and realises she still has a lot to learn. That’s okay. “I feel like I’m living a dream,” she says. “I just putter on.”
Rod Dunbar
Rod Dunbar tried to convince Idealog that he wasn’t right for this feature—but we weren’t swayed. Dunbar, who is working on a vaccine against melanoma, is exactly the type of emerging talent we hoped to uncover.
Chemist Margaret Brimble thinks so, too. “He is very switched-on,” says the winner of the 2007 L’Oréal-UNESCO award for women in science, “and he can communicate his work brilliantly.”
Dunbar received his medical degree from the University of Otago, but after a year as a house doctor he hung up his stethoscope and spent two years playing music, writing plays and generally, he says, being a bum. He hit the books again for his PhD (supporting himself in part as a script consultant on Shortland Street and playing ‘Mr Music’ on a game show), and then headed to Oxford for six years.
That’s where he hit his straps. “I got into a very good lab and found that, coming from a New Zealand educational background, you can cut it at Oxford.” He arrived at a time when a new technology was bursting onto the scene; he made use of that and published a load of papers. Establishing that CV, he says, enabled his return under a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship, and he set up his lab at Auckland University in 2003.
“Science is a tremendously social activity—and a creative activity,” says Dunbar. “Sure, there’s a lot of hard graft and bashing your head against protocols, but the fundamentals of science are the creative steps.”
Daniel Robertson
Daniel Robertson quit university with just six months to go on his electrical engineering degree. “I spent a semester in France on a scholarship, sitting at a desk doing engineering calculations,” he recalls. “It wasn’t much fun.”
Robertson, 25, couldn’t stomach that career option or the prospect of another lecture. Liking the challenge of business, he set up an online Linux store which went well—but it didn’t take long to realise what a tiny market Linux offered. Books presented a broader appeal and the major player, Amazon, had pretty much ignored Australia and New Zealand. That left room to launch Fishpond in 2004 (just as eBay left space for Trade Me). An Australian site followed in mid-2005 and Fishpond now ships more to Australia than within New Zealand.
Sales have doubled annually and the company uses its profits to fund growth, impressing Trade Me founder Sam Morgan. “Not only is [Robertson] building a website,” says Morgan, “but he’s building an online business that includes real-world problems of supply chain, packaging and postage of goods.”
Amazon is a daunting competitor but Robertson says he’s slowly chipping away. “Our goal is to be top-of-mind in New Zealand and Australia.”
Katie Lockhart
It’s a real accolade to have Karen Walker say everything a particular designer does is amazing. But that’s how she describes the work of interior designer and stylist Katie Lockhart.
Lockhart’s first real job was as Walker’s design assistant. But she had an obsession with magazines—particularly those focussing on Italian interiors—and headed off to Europe to freelance for the titles she loves, including Casa da Abitare and World of Interiors.
In December 2005, Lockhart, 30, came home when Swanndri asked her to design their stores (she also redesigned Walker’s outlets). She continues to freelance for the European magazines. “If anything, I became more of a novelty to them,” Lockhart says of her return. “They haven’t been here; they don’t know what I’m seeing or what inspires me here.”
Later this year, World of Interiors is running a feature on the maraes of the Mahia Peninsula, written and art-directed by Lockhart and photographed by New Zealander Derek Henderson. Last year with two business partners she launched a line of fine cashmere, ‘To Sir with Love’, inspired by her time working in Scotland. In September, UK Vogue is running an exclusive; Elle and Tatler are covering it in October.
Don’t expect the attention to distract Lockhart, though. “I have to be really careful that I don’t spread myself too thin over too many disciplines and lose the quality that I really try to maintain.”
Steve West
When Idealog asked Mike Chunn for suggestions, we expected a list of musicians soon to sign million-dollar deals. But no: Chunn named Steve West, impressed by the software he’s developed for disc jockeys. It’s changing the way DJs do their jobs all over the world, Chunn says.
West, 31, formed Serato in 1998 with his friend AJ Bertenshaw to commercialise an algorithm that changes the speed of recorded music without distorting pitch. The resulting product sold well and gave Serato the backing it needed to develop Scratch LIVE, a tool that lets DJs ‘scratch’ electronic music the way they do vinyl.
Scratch LIVE is making vinyl obsolete, but record companies are paranoid about providing digital copies of pre-release music. West’s solution? A secure digital file that only plays on Scratch LIVE. Record labels are negotiating with West for a system that’s a perfect set-up: the labels pay Serato to solve a problem and the company creates dedicated customers.
It’s all very satisfying, says West, who, when he was studying computer programming, couldn’t imagine running a company, employing dozens and selling products all over the world. “My highest expectation would have been to work on video games,” he says. “That was the most fun I could see on my horizon.”
Comments
chris
wow, depressing stuff. nobody here "upsetting any apple carts"… Why such a focus on pragmatic and logical people who are a dime a dozen everywhere in the world? your panel of experts should have looked a bit harder.
Kate Backler
Not sure if I am in the right forum but you published a picture of Sarah Adams and Matt Backler's designs in your magazine with this 'Ten for Tomorrow' feature. I was wondering if you have them on the website anywhere (I am Matts sister and have someone interested in them both - Matt and Sarah are in Germany now so not easy to get hold of sorry)
Matt Cooney
Not on the website, Kate, but if you drop me an email I'll send you a PDF.
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