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
Whāia te Taniwha
Māori artists consider the enduring relevance of taniwha in Aotearoa.
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Commentary
The Edge of the Sea
A vision of New Zealand’s past from 1995:
Europeans first imagined New Zealand as “a garden and a pasture in which the best elements of British society might grow into an ideal nation”... When the smoke of the colonists’ fires cleared at the end of the 19th century, New Zealand had become a different country. Māori had lost their most precious life-support system. Only in the hilliest places did the forest still come down to the sea. Huge slices of the ancient ecosystem were missing, evicted and extinguished. Our histories, however, have had neither the sense of place nor ecological consciousness to explain what has happened.
Commentary
Safe Houses, Comfort Zones
In an age of crisis and pandemic, our basic human need to remain safe has seen living spaces transformed into protection zones and shells to pull back into. So it is perhaps unsurprising to see pictures of domestic interiors charging up differently, re-emerging as sites of refuge, confinement and familiar disarray. Here curator Ken Hall looks at two works from the exhibition Persistent Encounters.
My Favourite
Pauline Rhodes – Land Extensums, Banks Peninsula
I only have to set a direction towards Horomaka Banks Peninsula, and I feel an energy, a charge. The ritual of a takeaway coffee at Wairewa Little River. A flicker of shadows from the centenary lime trees lining the road at Cooptown. Picking up speed to begin the swinging ascent to the Crater Rim. A rush of air, sweeping up over the summit and along the wide expanse of the Peninsula, hilltops encircling a traveller like comforting arms.
Collection
Marcantonio Raimondi, Albrecht Dürer The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, from The Life of the Virgin, after Albrecht Dürer
German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer began his Life of the Virgin woodblock print series in about 1500. Italian printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi saw these after moving to Venice in 1506, and began engraving copies. Infuriated by their appearance on the market, Dürer lodged a complaint with the Venetian Senate. In the preface of his completed series in 1511, he still fumed: “Hold! You crafty ones, strangers to work, and pilferers of other men’s brains. Think not rashly to lay your thievish hands upon my works.” Marcantonio had by then established a print workshop in Rome, which he ran from 1513 in partnership with the celebrated painter Raphael. This scene from The Gospel of Luke shows Mary and Joseph dedicating the infant Jesus to the Lord at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The aged Simeon holds the child in fulfilment of the Spirit’s promise that he would live to see the Messiah. Alongside, the prophet Anna gives her thanks and blessing.
(As Time Unfolds, 5 December 2020 – 7 March 2021)
Collection
Marcantonio Raimondi, Albrecht Dürer The Presentation of the Virgin, from The Life of the Virgin, after Albrecht Dürer
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Albrecht Dürer, Marcantonio Raimondi Meeting of St. Anne and St. Joachim at the Golden Gate, from The Life of the Virgin, after Albrecht Dürer
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