Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View
New exhibition now open.
Living Archives
Archives that tell stories about artists and history in Aotearoa
Whāia te Taniwha
Māori artists consider the enduring relevance of taniwha in Aotearoa.
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
Library unscathed
While some buildings in Christchurch suffered a lot of damage in Saturday's earthquake, others, often close by, escaped with none. Within the Gallery library, some shelves and filing cabinets were emptied, but this tower of books was exactly as a I left it on Friday afternoon.
I draw no grand conclusions from this other than the self-evident truth that earthquakes and their effects remain entirely unpredictable.
Tim Jones
Librarian
Emergency HQ
I'm keen to let you all know how Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū fared after the major earthquake here. It was a wild ride on Saturday, for sure, and it will take some time for parts of Christchurch to clean up. However, our Gallery has emerged unscathed as a building. In fact, we're so safe that we're being used as civil defence HQ at present.
Max's Gift
Having the opportunity to spend over a week in New York recently to work closely with the artist Max Gimblett and his studio assistants in making a selection from Max's extensive collection of works on paper for a gift to Christchurch Art Gallery rates as one of the highlights of my job as a curator.
Getting some on you
From a talk given by senior curator Justin Paton at the opening of Roger Boyce's The Illustrated history of painting at Christchurch Art Gallery on 12 August.
Digital Resurrection
I have been busy adding digitized versions of various print publications to the website this week.
Julian Dashper remembered
Tena koe,
In August this year Marie Shannon sent out an invite to some folks to write a memoir about Julian Dashper, the final text would be sent to Matthew Deleget of Minus Space, NY, and included in an exhibition honouring the first year of Julian's passing.
Marie and Matt have kindly agreed to let me add my text to our blog, I hope it might bring some memories of your own about our friend to the fore ...
Cheers, Nathan
NYC - Public Art
I'm back now, but two New York experiences of public art have stayed with me; Antony Gormley's Event Horizon at and around Madison Square Park (on 5th Avenue and 23rd Street), and the Starn brothers' project, Big Bambú, on the rooftop sculpture area at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Trans Tasman
In 2008 I was employed as an Art and Object Handler at the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, London. About halfway through my year working there I was sent on a course which focussed on the safe handling and movement of oversized, heavy sculptures. The course involved workshops, lectures, and a very interesting array of people from galleries and museums throughout the UK, and was held at West Dean College, which stretches over 10kms along the Sussex South Downs and Lavant Valley in Chichester, South East England.
Dear Mr Bulletin
For some unknown reason, the Bulletin inbox appears to be more susceptible to spam than the rest of the Gallery's mail system, which frequently withholds fairly important messages from me. Doing my usual trawl through the inbox today it occurred to me that the emphasis of Bulletin's spam appears to have developed over the last year or so.
NYC
Peter Vangioni and I visited the Jewish Museum in NYC late last week - it had been the last day of a particularly interesting and nicely-focussed exhibition we were both impressed by 'Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, Gottlieb'. The three artists were commissioned to make a work each in the early 1950s for a synagogue in Milburn, New Jersey and this brought together the three works and some preliminary drawings in a 'small, but transcendent exhibition.' (I'm glad the New York Times reviewer agreed with us!)