In the autumn of 1936, Rita Angus, with artist friends Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell, took a ten-day sketching trip to Cass – a remote outpost on the Midland Line to Te Tai Poutini / the West Coast. Angus completed several works in oil and watercolour in the following months, all showing her attentiveness to human presence in the sweeping landscape. Built structure and material in Cass, her best-known work, includes railway sheds, a stationary wagon, telegraph poles and stacked up timber opposite a solitary waiting passenger. Other finished works from this visit featured a derelict musterers’ hut, and the Canterbury College Mountain Biological Station with a passing steam engine.

(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)