Artist, tutor and gallerist Elva Bett supported experimental emerging artists in the 1960s and 70s such as Doreen Blumholt, Hamish Keith, John Drawbridge and Tanya Ashken.

Together with Catherine Duncan, Bett opened the Bett Duncan Gallery on Wellington’s Cuba St in 1968. Their storeroom included works by Rita Angus, Trevor Moffitt, Don Binney and Dame Robin White as well as Philip Clairmont and Tony Fomison. This eclectic selection of artists was sustained by the ‘chaotic, anarchic’ energy of art in the late 1960s and Bett and Duncan’s desire to pursue the best and brightest young painters to represent.

After a number of various galleries and creative ventures, the room at 147 Cuba Street ran as the artist-run-space Enjoy Gallery from 2005 to 2019, continuing Bett and Duncan’s legacy of showcasing experimental young artists.