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
Collection
Shona Rapira-Davies Kawakawa Job 12: 7-8
This work by Shona Rapira Davies is a companion piece to her major installation Ko Te Kihikihi Taku Ingoa. It is a memorial to the children and people of Parihaka – a pacifist settlement that was invaded by colonial forces in 1881 in the wake of the Taranaki wars and confiscations of Māori land by the government. Here, Davies uses the kawakawa plant as a symbol for healing and remembrance. Kawakawa, with its distinctive heart-shaped, caterpillar-bitten leaves, has long been valued by Māori for its use in removing tapu, as a symbol of death and as rokoā. The title of the work references a verse in the Bible that encourages humans to learn from the whenua and the animals:
But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
tapu ~ sacredness, or something that is prohibited, restricted
rokoā ~ remedy, medicine, medicinal plant
whenua ~ land
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)
Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword
Welcome to the summer 2022/23 issue of Bulletin. Since our last magazine was published I’ve been enjoying the view from my office window, which takes in a new installation that fills the high void above the Gallery’s reception desk. Tīkawe is the first work the Mata Aho Collective have created with harakeke, braiding 530 metres over several months. An exceptionally beautiful addition to our foyer, it’s lovely to watch the shadows Tīkawe casts move and morph as the spring sun tracks across the sky. My thanks to the W. A. Sutton Trust for funding this new commission and addition to the Gallery’s collection.
Commentary
James Oram: By Spectral Hands
In the American psychological thriller Severance, the employees of Lumon Industries undergo a surgical procedure that separates their work and non-work memories. The uncanny plot unfolds into what feels like a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of the power that corporations exert over our lives, and the integration of the self into capitalism. In this fictional world Mark and his co-workers willingly join the corporation, blind to what it is they do as part of the Macrodata Refinement team. The series offers insight into how data has become a core part of capitalism, despite the over-abundance of information in a system founded on scarcity. Further, Severance’s data sorters must categorise and file the numbers that appear on their computer screens based on their emotional response to them, rather than applying logic, thereby integrating their feelings to the digital realm.
Article
Things That Happened at Dawn
This new piece of writing was commissioned to accompany Turumeke Harrington: Tātou tātou, nau mai rā, which is on display from 17 December 2022 until 29 January 2023.
Commentary
Mediating Reality
In the late 1980s, a significant shift for photography in Aotearoa New Zealand was identified in two art publications. The essays and images in these books showed how artists were utilising new strategies, breaking away from the prevailing documentary photography tradition that was, and still is, widespread in Aotearoa. Six Women Photographers (1986) was edited by artists Merylyn Tweedie and Rhondda Bosworth for Photoforum; and Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in Recent New Zealand Photography (1989) was the catalogue for an exhibition curated by Gregory Burke for City Gallery Wellington. The artists included in both publications questioned in various ways the assumptions and rules of image making, manipulating the media and making a political move from the standpoint of taking a photograph, to making one. No longer was a photograph considered a truthful representation of reality. Instead, photography was seen as a product of, and a participant in, current social and cultural values.
My Favourite
Charles Meryon: Nouvelle Zélande, Presqu’île de Banks, 1845...
1957 was a big year for me – transitions from a middle- sized hometown to life in a major city, and from high school to university, with an emphasis on courses in French language and literature. And late in that year a new display in the Canterbury Museum allowed my rudimentary interest in New Zealand history, my unstructured interest in the visual arts, and my commitment to things French, to come together around the work of an artist I had never heard of, but who had lived briefly at Akaroa in the 1840s – Charles Meryon.
Artist Profile
Everythingism
In 2019, the Tate Modern staged a solo exhibition of the work of Russian artist Natalia Goncharova. It was the first time the artist had had a major retrospective in the UK, and the exhibition included her paintings, prints, costume designs and textiles. The exhibition presented reviewers with a twinned challenge: how to talk about an artist who was so little known in the UK, and one who was a woman?