Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Disruptive Landscapes: Contemporary Art from Japan
Quietly powerful and immersive video works revealing the politics behind our view of landscape.
John Vea: Ini Mini Mani Mou
Powerful new work examining the complexities of the immigration process in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Dear Shurrie
The art, influence and friendships of sculptor and teacher Francis Shurrock
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
Commentary
Portraits for the Million
Scottish-born brothers John Tait (1836–1907) and Alexander Tait (1839–1913) established themselves as photographers in gold rush Hokitika in about 1866, the period in which Catton’s The Luminaries is set. While building up a broader picture of photographers for the Hidden Light: Early Canterbury and West Coast Photography book and exhibition, I recalled an interview with the novelist at around the time of her 2013 Man Booker Prize success, and her mention of having restricted her reading for a year before starting the novel to nothing published after 1866, giving the National Library’s Papers Past credit as a vital source. The trails and condensed stories of many of the photographers in Hidden Light were largely brought together via this same indispensable means.
Exhibition
Luigi Rossini: Le Antichità Romane
A young Italian architect and archaeologist is captivated by the Rome of antiquity.
Notes
Swings by Ethel Spowers
This article first appeared in The Press on 12 January 2018 as 'A champion of the pioneering linocut'.
Exhibition
Hidden Light: Early Canterbury and West Coast Photography
Uncovering the remarkable, largely unseen work of early New Zealand photographers.
Exhibition
Closer: Old Favourites, New Stories
New perspectives on ten of the Gallery’s best-loved paintings.
Exhibition
Yellow Moon: He Marama Kōwhai
Yellow is a colour with impact – it’s time to encounter its brilliance.
Notes
Among the sandhills by Adrian Stokes
This article first appeared as 'Sandhills painting's life as nomadic as artist's' in The Press, 15 August 2017.
Notes
Portrait of John Marshman by Samuel Butler
This article first appeared as 'Painting's fascinating life mirrors subject's ' in The Press, 15 May 2017.
Commentary
Such Human Tide
The exhibition He Waka Eke Noa brings together colonial-era, mainly Māori, portraiture alongside objects linked to colonisation – it’s a predictably uncomfortable mix. While the degree of discomfort may depend on one’s background or degree of connection to an enduringly difficult past, objects related to emigration and colonisation can be a useful lenses. As relics from a specific period in global history, when the movement of (particularly) European people was happening at an unprecedented scale, they hold stories with a measure of complexity that obliges an open-minded reading. There is no denying that they speak of losses and gains, of injustices and rewards.