Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist
A rare opportunity to view the work of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most adventurous and experimental modernist artists.
Made in the Pacific: A Collection of Tāoga
A selection of Pacific tāoga from the Canterbury Museum in conversation with contemporary artworks that highlight the continued strength in culture and traditional art forms.
Mark Adams: A Survey | He Kohinga Whakaahua
A comprehensive survey spanning the artist's career.
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
Colin McCahon Canterbury Plains
During his time living in Ōtautahi Christchurch in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Colin McCahon completed several paintings of the hills and plains of the Waitaha Canterbury region. The geometric patterns of the paddocks and shelter belts in this work hint at McCahon’s growing interest in abstraction, which would become a major focus in his work. This painting is thought to have been inspired by Te Whakatakanga-o-te-ngārehu-o-te-ahi-a-Tamatea, the city’s Port Hills, not far from where the McCahon family lived in the suburb of Waltham.
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)
Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword
Welcome to Christchurch Art Gallery’s first Bulletin of 2018, B.191.
In this issue, Roger Collins looks at the Pacific etchings of eighteenth-century French artist Charles Meryon, who sailed around New Zealand on the Rhin, visiting the French settlement of Akaroa in 1843. Meryon continued to create images of the South Pacific throughout his life as exemplars of a possible alternative to the ‘social hell of a great European city’.
Commentary
Zero Degrees of Separation
The New Zealand art world is an intimate place but my connection to Jenny Harper runs deeper than the usual bonds of a small community. Admitting this is a necessary disclaimer. I’m not an objective commentator; Jenny is family, literally. And professionally, I owe her plenty. What follows are some personal recollections about the Jenny I know through the associations we share, on the occasion of her imminent departure from the Christchurch Art Gallery, where she has been director since October 2006, making this the longest role in her distinguished career.
My Favourite
Ane Tonga's Seta
There’s a moment in my play Black Faggot when a gay Samoan man describes the moment he sees ‘this fine chocolate piece of mmmmmm’ on the dancefloor at a nightclub.
‘…he looked over at me and then he smiled and then I was like, Damn, he’s a Tongan. He had a mouthful of gold in there…’
Postcard From...
Postcard From...
I moved to Paris in December to join my French partner and pursue my art history research and writing. We live in Rueil-Malmaison, west of central Paris, where there is an abundance of boulangeries and patisseries (many of which were even open on Christmas Day!), fruit and vegetable markets, cheese shops, and parks including the Parc de Bois-Préau and the lovely Parc des Impressionnistes which is situated beside the Seine. However, the area is most famous for the Château de Malmaison, the former private residence of Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress Joséphine. The château dates from the seventeenth century and displays Jacques-Louis David’s masterpiece, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.
Artist Profile
Charles Meryon: Etcher of Banks Peninsula
French explorers, natural historians, whalers and Catholic missionaries were increasingly present in the south-west Pacific from the mid-eighteenth century, but there was also a political thread in this activity. During the 1820s some in France saw New Zealand as a potential penal colony, and the project that saw a handful of French colonists settle on Banks Peninsula in 1840 made an official French presence in the region even more appropriate. This took the form of a French naval base, the ‘New Zealand station’, established at Akaroa in 1840.