Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View
Dynamic and progressive paintings and woodcuts from one of Aotearoa’s New Zealand foremost modernist artists.
Living Archives
Archives that tell stories about artists and history in Aotearoa
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil
Exploring the relationship between tākata and whenua – people and land – through Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.
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Ka tuwhera ki te 9pm i kā pō Wenerei
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Late night Wednesday until 9pm
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Free entry, free wifi
Interview
Ko Te Kihikihi Taku Ingoa
Chloe Cull: Tēnā koe Whāea, thank you for making time when I know how busy you are. We’re here to talk about your work – Ko te Kihikihi Taku Ingoa – currently installed in our foyer at Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery. Ko te Kihikihi Taku Ingoa has come here to Ōtautahi from Ngāmotu New Plymouth in Taranaki, where it was first commissioned by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. It also brings with it kōrero from Aotea Great Barrier Island, where you’re from. Let’s start with Taranaki – can you talk about the specific history from there that this work responds to?
Practice, Poetry and Precision
Artist Yona Lee has been preparing something very special in her Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland studio – a new commission that honours the history of the Gallery building, Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Lee took some time away from her workbench to speak with lead curator Felicity Milburn about her dream of filling the under-stairs space with water and light.
Down the Waitaki Awa
Pouarataki curator Māori Chloe Cull talks with artist and designer Ross Hemera (Waitaha, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe) about his life and work.
A Space for Conversation
Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artists Victoria Edwards and Ina Johann have worked in artistic collaboration as Edwards + Johann since 2007. They take an interdisciplinary approach to art- making, combining photography, drawing, collage, performance, video and sculpture.
Curator Felicity Milburn spoke with the pair shortly after their month-long residency at Sutton House, during which they prepared sculptures for their upcoming Gallery exhibition. Edwards + Johann: Mutabilities—propositions to an unknown universe will combine these with other works made across the last five years to investigate ideas of response to place, connection and transformation. All of the works carry the indelible resonance of the unforgettable, and tragically unpredictable, geothermal environment of Whakaari White Island, which Edwards + Johann visited in 2018, prior to its devastating 2019 eruption.
A Shift in Place
After Encountering Aotearoa opened at Dunedin Public Art Gallery I spent time reflecting on whether I was happy with the body of work and how it conveyed the journey I had taken with my Pāpā and my relationship with the whenua.
Toloa Tales
In November and December 2023, artists and friends Sione Tuívailala Monū (Aotearoa, Australia, Tonga) and Edith Amituanai (Aotearoa, Sāmoa) went to Sāmoa together to make new video works for their forthcoming exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū: Toloa Tales. With extended family and now her mother and aunt living there, Edith has visited several times before. However, this was the first time for Sione. The relationship between Tonga and Sāmoa is one of ancient rivalry and connection, with Tonga more recently exerting colonial force in the region before European and American colonisation. Edith and Sione talked to Bulletin about their time in Sāmoa, their process of making, and how their understandings of cultural identity and migration have changed over time.
The Maureen Lander Archive
After nearly forty years as a practicing artist, Maureen Lander (Ngāpuhi, Te Hikutu, Pākehā) is developing a digital archive of photographs and related materials documenting her career to date. This has been made possible by the return of her daughter Kerry to Aotearoa New Zealand after twenty- three years in Australia. Assisted by Heritage Studios staff and funding from Creative New Zealand, Kerry is working to archive and digitise everything, which will eventually be available to the public. Maureen and Kerry share thoughts about the process so far.
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.
Looking at Forty Years of Māori Moving Image Practice
Māori Moving Image: An Open Archive is co-curated by Bridget Reweti and Melanie Oliver. The following text is a conversation between the two curators around co-curating, archives and Māori moving image practice.
John Simpson
Early in 2017, Professor John Simpson, the former head of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, approached the Gallery’s then director, Jenny Harper, with a proposition: he had been considering the future of the art collection he had accumulated over the past six decades, and wished to know whether the Gallery would be interested in selecting a group of works for a gift. My colleague Ken Hall and I visited John one afternoon in March. It quickly became apparent to us that the collection was significant and that the offer was particularly generous. Interestingly, we discovered that the works variously represented John’s own artistic interests and his national and international artworld connections. As such, they told a story of art and art history that usefully expanded the local account.