The photographs that Jane Zusters made during the 1970s assert the presence and visibility of queer relationships, particularly in Ōtautahi. Jane often took photographs of her friends and loved ones, spontaneously capturing intimate moments. In this image, the humid environment of the Begonia House is a setting for a breathy embrace, but there is much we don’t know about these two people. Instead, Jane uses her camera to frame the simplicity of a close connection to someone else, embracing bodies and hands wrapping around each other.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- 21 July 2024)

Ōtautahi artist Jane Zusters works across painting, photography and ceramics. These recently acquired photographs capture Jane’s bohemian life and friends in Christchurch in the late-1970s, and precede a period when she was mainly painting. Tender and intimate, they give us a sense of warm friendships and a supportive community, despite the conservatism of Christchurch at the time, and they address queer histories, gender and identity. Portrait of a woman marrying herself challenges the expectation that women should marry, presenting instead a ceremony of self-care and respect. We see a truncated nude figure in the pool, staying afloat through curling her toes under the handrail; her friend breastfeeding her child; and another friend dressing up. While these works share the formal elements of her painting, such as strong composition, contrast or colour, they are also an important social record of the times.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Ōtautahi artist Jane Zusters works across painting, photography and ceramics. These recently acquired photographs capture Jane’s bohemian life and friends in Christchurch in the late-1970s, and precede a period when she was mainly painting. Tender and intimate, they give us a sense of warm friendships and a supportive community, despite the conservatism of Christchurch at the time, and they address queer histories, gender and identity. Portrait of a woman marrying herself challenges the expectation that women should marry, presenting instead a ceremony of self-care and respect. We see a truncated nude figure in the pool, staying afloat through curling her toes under the handrail; her friend breastfeeding her child; and another friend dressing up. While these works share the formal elements of her painting, such as strong composition, contrast or colour, they are also an important social record of the times.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Masquerading as women from 1980s Ōtautahi Christchurch, Margaret Dawson underlined the persistence of socially scripted roles – and their impact on the real women trying to exist within them. Interior with Venetians crackles with tension and constraint. In tightly curled wig and pearls, Dawson grips the back of a chair, eyes downcast, mouth pursed in a tight grimace. The world outside is strangely distant, sectioned off by the sharp lines of the blinds behind her.

(Dummies & Doppelgängers, 2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025)

Margaret Dawson has lived and worked in Christchurch since the late-1970s. Her work uses photography as a means to explore identity and gender roles through carefully constructed images of herself and others. Marching Girl and Interior with Venetians were both from the Dreams and Illusions series, in which the artist used her own body as a way to show the mutability of the self and representation. One moment, a woman in marching costume strides out of the photograph, and the next, she is an anxious figure shown in her domestic setting. Taking on these two personas implies that images we see of others are similarly fleeting and unreliable; that we can all be seen in many different lights and perspectives. Sword Lily (Gladiolus) further exposes the construction of the photograph, with the backdrop hung from the washing line in the backyard, as the figure performs a sword swallowing trick.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )