Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Made in the Pacific: A Collection of Tāoga
A selection of Pacific tāoga from the Canterbury Museum in conversation with contemporary artworks that highlight the continued strength in culture and traditional art forms.
Mark Adams: A Survey | He Kohinga Whakaahua
A comprehensive survey spanning the artist's career.
Ana Iti: Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal
An immersive installation considering the legacies of deforestation and significance of kauri trees.
E tuwhera ana te wharetoi i kā rā e 7 o te wiki, 10am - 5pm
Ka tuwhera ki te 9pm i kā pō Wenerei
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Uruka utukore, ahokore utukore
Free entry, free wifi
Artist Profile
Ahead of Her Time
Whanganui born artist Edith Marion Collier (1885–1964) was one of the earliest pioneers of modernism in Aotearoa New Zealand. During nearly nine years of art studies in Europe from 1913 to 1921 she produced some of the most avant-garde works by any New Zealander at that time.
Interview
Te Pō-whāwhā
Over the past decade, Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tūpoto, Ngāti Here, Pākehā) has developed a distinct multidisciplinary practice, combining drawing, sculpture, text and moving image to explore decolonial histories and relationships to the land. For her immersive new commission for the Gallery, Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal, Iti spent time in Te Tai Tokerau, researching the impact of colonisation and legacies of the kauri logging industry for her tīpuna, whānau and the region. Here, she talks with curator Melanie Oliver and shares some context for her new installation.
Artist Profile
Revisiting Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula and Whangaroa Akaroa Harbour
Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula and Whangaroa Akaroa Harbour have long been a haven for walkers and hikers, boaties and swimmers alike. The winding roads offer stunning vistas of Whakaraupō Lyttelton Harbour and the other outlying bays from high vantage points, and for decades artists have been inspired by the sheer power of the volcanic landforms.
My Favourite
Sybil Andrews: Storm
My mum Joan was always coming up with cool ways to keep us busy in the school holidays, and printmaking was a favourite activity for me. You didn’t have to be great at drawing, and all the stages were fun.
Commentary
Land of Memories
As an archaeologist specialising in Māori rock art heritage I have been taken by the intertwining of three modern recognitions in international rock art and archaeological research. Firstly, landscapes are not objectively viewed and fixed physical environments – rather they are mental constructs that exist in our minds and are shaped by our cultural understandings, personal experiences, beliefs and changing social contexts. Secondly, fixed in place where the ancestors made it, the location of a piece of rock art in a landscape is a critical part of its meaning over and above its motif subject. And, thirdly, still fixed in place, rock art is intergenerational; it can last tens of thousands of years.
Interview
Beneath the Canopy
Denise Copland is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most influential printmakers. For over five decades, she has challenged how we think about our relationship with the natural world, combining expressive mark-making with technical expertise. One of Copland’s works, Indigenous III, is currently on display in the Kai raro i te kāuru section of He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil. Felicity Milburn invited her to share a little more about her practice and approach.
Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
Welcome to the two-hundred and twenty-third edition of our quarterly Bulletin magazine. We are especially proud of each issue of this magazine; it remains one of our most important ways of staying connected with our Friends, Foundation supporters, our Ōtautahi audience and the wider art sector.
Bulletin is made possible thanks to our ongoing partnership with Leon White Design and the talented design students from Ara Institute of Canterbury. My sincere thanks go to Leon and his team, who have expertly led Bulletin’s design since B.206 back in December 2021. Their creativity, care and commitment continue to shape the look and feel of our magazine, and we are deeply grateful for their support.
Commentary
Awhitu Wānanga
Made in the Pacific: A Collection of Tāoga celebrates Pacific tāoga, bringing together examples made by moana ancestors with new work by their distant mokopuna.
The museum treasures in this exhibition are by makers who gained their knowledge from elders and specialists in their communities. Their work contains precious cultural histories within both the materials and visual language.
Commentary
‘For us and our children after us’
“… the relative poverty in which many Canterbury Kāi Tahu were then living was directly attributable to their loss of land in the nineteenth century.”
In 1952, the historian and friend of Kāi Tahu Harry Evison (1924–2014) completed his Master’s thesis, ‘A history of the Canterbury Maoris (Ngaitahu) with special reference to the land question’. He concluded that the relative poverty in which many Canterbury Kāi Tahu were then living was directly attributable to their loss of land in the nineteenth century. His argument reflected the intergenerational, lived experience of Kāi Tahu communities but was dismissed in the academic circles of the 1950s where the inherently racist Pitt-Rivers theory of ‘culture clash’ prevailed – according to this theory the negative impact of the colonial encounter on Māori was attributed to ‘psychological collapse’ rather than the economic hardship enforced by the loss of land and resources.
My Favourite
Max Hailstone: Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Herald, South Island/Kapiti Sheet
I have a complicated love/hate relationship with Max Hailstone’s ‘Treaty Posters’. I was a student of Max’s very shortly after he completed this suite of screenprints in 1990 for the 150th anniversary of the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi. I remember seeing the prints lurking around the design studios but also knew that our art history lecturer Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi ki Hokianga, Te Aupouri, Ngāti Kuri) had stepped in at the last minute and organised a tapu-lifting ceremony at the Ilam School of Fine Arts to alleviate some of the controversy around the project.