Corban Estate Arts Centre

Corban Estate
by Celia Walker

The purchase of the former Corban Estate Winery by the Waitakere City Council in 1992, and its subsequent transformation into the Corban Estate Arts Centre, keeps an important part of West Auckland heritage alive in what would otherwise be lost in the fast-food, car-yard hustle of the Lincoln Road area.

Multiple buildings have been smartened up just enough to make them serviceable, but without losing their slightly grungy charm, with a broad community of artists working out of the spaces. This gives it that slightly oddball feel to it that all good artist workshops should have, with resident artists traversing the arts spectrum, from textile design, painting and enormous sculpture, through to performing arts groups.

The start of the Corban winemaking tradition came when Lebanese Assid Corban purchased his first block in 1902. Mana whenua of the area, Te Kawerau a Maki, had been pressured in the latter part of the 1800s to sell large amounts of their land holdings in West Auckland, including Henderson. Corban was just one of several Dalmatian/Croatian individuals and families that brought grape growing and winemaking to this part of Auckland in the early years of the 20th century.

Many of these winemaking names persist, including Corbans, along with others such as Babich and Soljans, though their West Auckland presence is much less than it was.

The corrugated iron clad three-storey cellar building that dates from 1907 towers over the site, which is a sprawling mix of former sheds, warehouses, and concrete structures, along with the grander 1924 homestead that has been converted to a gallery space. The constant changeover of shows in the gallery mean it is hard to categorise, but a general emphasis on innovation and diversity makes it worth a visit.

There are strange features that sit abandoned and just hint at former uses – a platform of raised concrete discs, mausoleum-like rows of wine vats. Great hunks of slowly rusting corten steel form part of work in progress by the sculptor David McCracken – the hard-edged forms seem entirely at home in these post-industrial surroundings. Pacifica dancers limber up beside half-worked stone objects; open studio doors give glimpses into artistic practices.

At one stage the Corban’s holdings extended to well over 100 acres, the Arts Centre and surrounds are now whittled back to just the land around the
buildings, but the site is adjacent to Henderson Park accessed via the green and white Art Bridge designed by the sculptor Neil Miller.

Image Credits: Celia Walker