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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Collection
Saskia Leek Slopes #5
Saskia Leek is concerned with the outmoded and the overlooked. She generally begins her paintings in response to other works – whether these are thrift shop masterpieces, ‘serious’ mid-century modernist works, or occasionally her own discarded earlier work. “I follow my nose after that, and just go back and forth between the source material and what the work becomes as I make decisions and play around with things.” Her paintings are domestic in scale and require the intimate regard of the viewer. “I like the economy of scale”, she says. “Because I work on them over a long period of time, I feel that they’re big.” “I’m interested in the idea that the original motive or intention for a work is quite different from the outcome. What happens between is really important. All the doubts and wrong turns and decisions that are made. I hope there’s some sense of vulnerability. I start with the idea that these paintings, that have been pretty much discarded – well, anything can be made into something. I never throw away my old paintings. I just keep working them until they come to a point of stillness.”
(We do this, 12 May 2018 - 26 May 2019)
Collection
Bridget Riley Cosmos
Unwavering in her exploration of sharp-edged, shimmering abstraction since the early 1960s, Bridget Riley draws inspiration from nature and optical sensation. She also recognises that her work conveys subtle, unexpectedand sometimes fleeting effects.
Stand back and take it all in: Bridget explains that “the colours [are] organised on the canvas so that the eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. Vision can be arrested, tripped up or pulled back in order to float free again.”
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022-21 July 2024 )
Collection
Lisa Reihana Sex Trade, Gift for Banks, Dancing Lovers, Sextant Lesson (18550) (19205)
Working in the fields of cinema and performance, Lisa Reihana seeks to create a space for indigenous voices within her work, particularly for Māori and Pasifika women. This still image is taken from her 64-minute panoramic video work in Pursuit of Venus [infected], made in response to a scenic wallpaper from the early 1800s titled Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique. Reihana filmed her own tableau of Oceanic peoples’ encounters with Captain Cook and his men. The scene is complex and challenges colonial perspectives and historic interpretations, particularly around how women were used as objects for trade. “I hope that as a viewer you’re always trying to work out what exactly is going on in this work, just like these historical figures would have”, says Reihana. “When you suddenly meet new people and new things are happening, you have to decipher and make sense of the world yourself. There will always be lots of misunderstanding – layers of misunderstanding – and that is what is going to happen for viewers too.”
(Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania, 2021)
Collection
Christina Read Chapters
Chapters was a key component of Christina Read’s 2017 exhibition 1. Here’s A Plan – (Things To Do) at the University of Canterbury. Read described that show as being based on “plans for a series of exhibitions that I have not made yet, which are in turn based on chapters from a non-narrative fiction/autobiographical/self-help book which I have not written yet”. Presented on a grandiose scale that suggests the early exhilaration of plan-making, Read’s list is undercut with a sense of uncertainty and self-doubt – capturing what Read calls the “aspirations and self-delusions” of an “unspectacular” life.
(We do this, 12 May 2018 - 26 May 2019)
Exhibition
Cerith Wyn Evans: Things are Conspicuous in their Absence...
Cerith Wyn Evans is an artist with a rich conceptual practice. This work was acquired and displayed to mark the retirement of Christchurch Art Gallery’s long-standing and much-loved director Jenny Harper.