What’s On
Film: Canterbury Film Society’s Halloween Spook Night Special
A Halloween double feature for your viewing horror!
Talk and Film: Women of the Impressionist Movement
An evening exploring the contention that “Impressionism is female”.
Special Event: Judy Darragh's The Grid
Join us this Labour Weekend and take part in a massive artist’s take-over project involving a riot of colour and a heap of paper-based tape.
Guided tours
11am and 2pm daily
Open 7 days
Free entry, free wifi
Late night
Wednesday until 9pm
Notes
New Head Curator Announced
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is delighted to announce the appointment of our new head curator, Felicity Milburn.
Commentary
Te Āhua o te Hau ki te Papaioea
The ‘Operation 8’ anti-terror raids in October of 2007 were the culmination of a police investigation that led to the raiding of homes across New Zealand. The raids were conducted after an extended period of surveillance, which was enabled through use of the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act. In 2013 the Independent Police Conduct Authority found that police had “unnecessarily frightened and intimidated” people during the raids.
My Favourite
Cerith Wyn Evans's Things are conspicuous in their absence...
I have never seen an artwork reflect something so true. “Things are conspicuous in their absence” is such an uncommonly heard reflection that it is eye-catching. When things are around us, they seem normal and often go unnoticed; the moment they are gone it can be startling and we wake up.
Commentary
What We Talk About With McCahon
Where to begin when writing or talking about Colin McCahon? I remember seeing one of his paintings for the first time, a North Otago landscape painted deep green with a sunless white sky on a piece of hardboard, hanging at the Forrester Gallery in Ōamaru while on a family trip when I was a young teenager. I felt like I recognised the landscape depicted from what I saw around me growing up, but I hadn’t seen it reduced to something so stark and primal before.
Interview
Looking at Forty Years of Māori Moving Image Practice
Māori Moving Image: An Open Archive is co-curated by Bridget Reweti and Melanie Oliver. The following text is a conversation between the two curators around co-curating, archives and Māori moving image practice.
Supporter
Monica Ryan
Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation
I grew up with an interest in art and this interest was accelerated through my early involvement in a special and well informed art group. One of my favourite pieces is Fanfare by Neil Dawson, particularly when it is lit up or glistening in the sun. It creates a dynamic entrance to Christchurch. I joined the board in 2008 and especially enjoy being involved in the art community in Christchurch and contributing in a real way. Working with like-minded people in the city.
Commentary
Raising a Glass
Bill Culbert died aged 84 on 28 March this year at his home in the Vaucluse region of Provence. Built from dilapidated farm buildings on a small hilltop at a deserted hamlet called Croagnes, it’s a home that he and his wife Pip began to establish in 1961. Then, the region was a sparsely populated economic backwater – the Culberts bought the hilltop buildings for just £100. In the valleys and on the surrounding slopes were a few small vineyards and farms. A 1962 painting, Gerard Going to Work, shows their neighbour, the farmer Felix Gerard, trudging off down the stony hillside wearing a wide- brimmed hat like the one worn by Vincent van Gogh at Arles.
Notes
Heck yeah, that happened!
Our very own Art-tastic by our very own Sarah Pepperle won TWO awards at last night's New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults at Te Papa!!!
Commentary
Doctor Jazz Stomp and the Webb Lane Sound
“Bill Hammond is long, lithe and tired, and was born several years ago. Is currently pursuing a Fine Arts course and trying hard to catch up. He is deeply interested in the aesthetic implications of sleep, sports the Rat-Chewed Look in coiffures for ’68, and dreams about blind mice in bikinis. He has never been known to sing outside the confines of his bedroom. Shows a marked but languid preference for the subtle textural nuances and dynamic shadings of washboard, cowbell, woodblocks, claves, cymbal, spoons, thimbles, tambourine, and the palms of the hands in percussive contact.”
Commentary
Power and Possibility
Jonathan Jones, art critic for the Guardian newspaper, described it as “a spectacle that displays the power and mystery of our planet”. Made more than forty years ago, Walter De Maria’s 1977 sculpture The Lightning Field remains one of the world’s most ambitious manifestations of light-based art.