What’s On
Absence
Sometimes the most compelling thing is what isn’t there.
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.
Salote Tawale: Ripple
New works from Fijian-Australian artist Salote Tawale exploring cultural identity and dislocated indigeneity.
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Free entry, free wifi
Exhibition
Max Gimblett: Ocean Wheel
A selection from the Max Gimblett and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett gift.
Artist Profile
In Memory of Quentin MacFarlane
Staff at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū were saddened to hear of the death of Quentin MacFarlane in July.
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.”
Notes
Julie King, 1945–2018
It was with much sadness that the staff of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū heard of the sudden death of local art historian Julie King in early December. Julie had developed a close relationship with the Gallery over the years, not only as a curator, researcher, writer, speaker and key member of the Friends of Christchurch Art Gallery, but also as a regular visitor to exhibitions, talks and events.
Commentary
As Stark and Grey as Stalin's Uniform
Heading along to the stunning Rita Angus: Life & Vision survey exhibition at the Gallery in 2009 I always had this nagging feeling that one work was missing from the walls – Angus’s Gasworks from 1933. This painting was one that I knew only through the black and white image that appeared first in a volume of Art in New Zealand in 1933; the same reproduction that was later used in Jill Trevelyan’s excellent biography of Angus and also in the catalogue for the National Art Gallery’s 1982 retrospective, Rita Angus. For the New Zealand art historian, Gasworks was a kind of legend – painted by one of the country’s best artists yet seen in person by only a very few. In 1975, when Gordon H. Brown curated New Zealand Painting 1920–1940: Adaption and Nationalism, Gasworks was listed as ‘location unknown’ in the accompanying catalogue. Amazingly the painting was also not included in the retrospective exhibition of 1982. We had grown to know this painting purely through a grainy black and white illustration from 1933. But the painting was never lost – Gasworks is a painting that has been cherished, protected and loved by the same Christchurch family since the early 1940s. And now, having been placed on loan to Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, it is available for the public to view for the first time since 1933, when it was shown at the Canterbury Society of Arts.
Exhibition
Trusttum: Just a Glimpse
Exuberant and boisterous, these large paintings by Philip Trusttum will lift the spirits
Notes
Pigeon Bay Creek, Banks Peninsula, N.Z. by Nicholas Chevalier
This article first appeared as 'A poignant look at Pigeon Bay's past' in The Press, 14 November 2017.
Exhibition
US V THEM: Tony de Lautour
Welcome to the low brow, high art world of Tony de Lautour’s paintings, sculptures and ceramics.
Interview
Sideslip
Sydow: Tomorrow Never Knows recently opened at Gallery and the exhibition’s curator, Peter Vangioni, took the opportunity to interview UK-based sculptor Stephen Furlonger. Furlonger was a contemporary of Carl Sydow and mutual friend and fellow sculptor John Panting, both at art school in Christchurch and in London during the heady days of the mid 1960s. His path as an artist during the late 1950s and 1960s in many ways mirrored that of Sydow and Panting.