John Bevan Ford

John Bevan Ford was born in Christchurch and was educated at Wellington Boys’ College and Hutt Valley High School. He attended Wellington Training College from 1949-50 spending his third year in Dunedin training as an art specialist. From 1952-1969 he taught as a professional arts adviser to schools in the Wellington area, in Taranaki, in Southland, and in Waikato. He took up an appointment as Lecturer in Art at Hamilton Teachers’ College from 1970-73 and from 1973-74 he received a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant to work as an artist. Ford was appointed Senior Lecturer in Māori Arts at Massey University and continued in this position until 1987. From 1988 to the present he has been working as a professional artist. He received his initial Māori art training with the other Māori arts specialists from master carver Pine Taiapa of Tikitiki. He assisted in the establishment of the Māori Artists and Writers’ Association (Nga Puna Waihanga) in 1973. Ford exhibited his art work widely throughout New Zealand, Australia, USA and England; his work is held in European galleries, the National Art Gallery of Australia and in selected New Zealand collections including New Plymouth’s Taranaki Museum which has the largest collection of his art work in the country. His work is also held in private collections in Italy, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, USA, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hungary, Australia and New Zealand. In 1985 Ford won the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Williams Art Award. In 1995 he was invited to do a series of lectures at the British Museum in conjunction with his solo exhibition at the Museum. The lectures were focused on the theme Te Aitanga a Kiwa: The progeny of Kiwa - a collection of Ford’s work based on the Pacific Rim. In 1995 Ford also presented his work in the USA at the Port Washington Library, Firehouse Gallery, Nassau Community College, the State University of Oregon and Portland, the Museum of National History in New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1998 Ford was an artist in residency at the British Museum coinciding with the museum’s exhibition of their collection of Māori taonga and exhibition of contemporary Māori art. Ford wrote non-fiction articles, book reviews and music reviews which have been published in various journals including the Evening Standard and Landfall. He wrote a poem about the Tainui landing at Kawhia which was presented with a painting he gave to Rangiatea Church.

Biographical sources

• Correspondence and phone conversation with John Bevan Ford, 5 Dec. 1992, and 14 Aug. 1998.