From the series Deities I

Kushana Bush draws on a range of art traditions in her intricate paintings, including Mughal and Persian miniatures, Japanese ukiyo-e, European frescoes and medieval illuminated manuscripts. Kushana blends these references with disarming and often funny contemporary details, such as branded sneakers and other familiar objects from popular culture, to create mesmerising works with fascinating, enigmatic narratives.

Glukupikron displays Kushana’s distinctive use of meticulous detail, shallow perspective and decorative patterning. Ancient Greek poet Sappho was known for her lyric poetry and used the word Glukupikron to denote the bittersweet nature of Eros – the way love entices you with sweet pleasure but can also cause bitter pain. It is an apt title for this work that is at once tense, comical, alluring and grotesque.

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

Kenneth Hassall was one of the most talented linocut artists of his generation, producing striking colour linocuts. His work appeared on the cover of Art in New Zealand and was reproduced in the journal several times during the 1940s. He was prolific, producing more than eighty prints during the 1930s and 1940s, and was particularly skilled in incorporating multiple colour blocks, perfectly aligned to achieve the colour combinations he required.

Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern Era, 11 February – 28 May 2023

Rhona Haszard studied at the Canterbury College School of Art in Ōtautahi Christchurch during the early 1920s before leaving for Europe with her husband and fellow artist, Lesley Greener, eventually settling in Alexandria in Egypt. On a trip to London in 1929, they visited the First Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts organised by Claude Flight and were immediately enamoured with the medium. Back in Alexandria, both Rhona and Leslie began working with linocuts, and the resulting prints were exhibited at Galerie Paul. A short while later their work was also included in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts in London in 1930. Rhona had much promise as a painter and printmaker, but she died tragically young in 1931 shortly after completing her series of linocuts.

Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern Era, 11 February – 28 May 2023

When the February 2011 earthquake struck Ōtautahi Christchurch it changed the structure of the land, flooding the roots of the pine trees along the New Brighton shore with fatal doses of salt water. Melissa Macleod collected the roots of these slowly drowning trees, and after cleaning them and applying a beeswax coating, she stretched them taut over circular frames in diminishing dimensions. Installed on top of each other like oversized garden sieves, each pattern intensifies and complicates the next, until they resemble arteries, a network of waterways or a disrupted city grid.

(Die Cuts and Derivations, 11 March – 2 July 2023)