What’s On
Robin White: Te Whanaketanga | Something Is Happening Here
A major survey of the career of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s best-loved artists.
Te Rā: The Māori Sail
Now on display at Te Puna o Waiwhetū!
Ship Nails and Tail Feathers
The stories told by rare, extravagant – and even curiously ordinary – objects.
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Free entry, free wifi
Ken Hall
Artist Profile
Flitting, Gliding, Strutting, Cavorting
Ranking highly among the privately-owned works of art that have fallen across this curator’s path is an exquisite late-Georgian era album of Indian bird watercolours. This significant, previously unpublished folio contains twenty-five delicate watercolours and three small lithographs. Most paintings were produced collaboratively in 1826 by an interesting couple, Elizabeth (Eliza) Jane D’Oyly and her husband Charles Walter D’Oyly, the latter recognised in India as “perhaps the most famous of the amateur British artists who depicted the Indian scene.” A treasured gift from Elizabeth to her sister Isabella Gilbert in 1866, the album has stayed in the same family since then. It also carries sombre themes alongside its splendours.
Exhibition
Ship Nails and Tail Feathers: Historic Treasures from the Collections of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Canterbury Museum
The stories told by rare, extravagant – and even curiously ordinary – objects.
Commentary
A Fireside Whodunnit
Father’s Tea entered the collection as an unexpected and welcome gift in 2020, together with a small portrait sketch and a larger interior scene by the same artist, both signed ‘EC’. Given by the granddaughter of artist Elizabeth Graham Chalmers (1870–1951), the paintings were old and well-travelled, needing the kind of care that galleries can provide. Father’s Tea also presented an intriguing puzzle around authorship, which has only recently been firmly re-established. As our research continued into 2021, local conservator Olivia Pitts undertook cleaning and repairs in preparation for its inclusion in the 2021–22 exhibition Leaving for Work. This included the removal of old varnish, infilling, and repainting areas of loss, and saw its strength vibrantly reinstated. Completing the restoration was the expert repair and re-gilding of the original ‘Watts profile’ frame by framing conservator Anne-Sophie Ninino.
Exhibition
Die Cuts and Derivations
An expansive installation by Peter Robinson sparks a collection-based look at how artists investigate and respond to space, through line, materials and improvisation.
Commentary
Ka Mua Ka Muri
Our histories are always with us, but who is telling the story? The Gallery’s new collection hang, Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection offers up a range of different perspectives on how the past and future might intersect, and invites us to rethink how we commonly see our heritage. Here, the exhibition’s curators have each selected a work from the exhibition for a closer look.
Exhibition
Barbara Tuck: Delirium Crossing
Ambiguous, floating picture worlds, a restless exploration of painting’s promise.
Interview
Raising the Clay
One of the themes explored in the Gallery’s new exhibition Leaving for Work is local industry, particularly in relation to pottery. The show includes an 1896 painting by Charles Kidson of well-known early Sydenham potter Luke Adams; three late nineteenth-century pots by Adams; and projections of a number of exceptional photographs by Steffano Webb. Keen to learn more, exhibition curator Ken Hall met up with local pottery historian Barry Hancox – perhaps best-known as former Smith’s Bookshop proprietor – and leading New Zealand photographer, Oxford-based Mark Adams. Mark’s links to this story include a distant family connection to Luke Adams; photographing many celebrated New Zealand potters of the 1970s and 1980s; and an abiding interest in land and memory.
Exhibition
The Moon and the Manor House
Aestheticism, Arts and Crafts, and the avid pursuit of beauty.