Three School Of Art Staff Laid Off

3 members of staff from the School of Art at the Otago Polytechnic have just been given notice of termination of their positions. This number is expected to rise to 5 in the next week. No explanation has been offered as to why these staff were selected for dismissal. Those recent appointments made to bolster the international reputation of the Polytechnic are however disproportionately represented. The dismissals are a part of an unresolved restructuring process being made in response to cuts in government funding.

These staff cuts will have a highly detrimental effect upon:
the state of the arts and photography in Dunedin and New Zealand;
education, and the teaching of those specialist disciplines which require high contact hours within polytechnics, conservatories and universities;
the fostering and development of creativity in Dunedin specifically, and New Zealand as a whole;
those associated economic and cultural benefits which accrue from maintaining Dunedin’s now threatened status as a leading cultural centre in the Pacific region.
We urge you to draw attention to this situation to help prevent this disturbing trend from becoming a widespread and irreversible pattern within our leading cultural institutions.

Amongst those artist-educators whose positions have been terminated is the Academic Leader and Section Coordinator for Photography, Max Oettli. Oettli has been a tireless advocate of photography as an aesthetic practice. In 1972, he was founding president of Photoforum (http://www.photoforum-nz.org), an organisation that established photography as a significant art form in New Zealand. Oettli is renowned for the links he has made between the Polytechnic and institutions such as the Blue Oyster Art Project Space. The loss of Oettli and his peers will seriously impoverish the creative wealth of New Zealand as a whole, as well as constituting a serious blow to the cultural life of the Otago region.

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