Bird Land: Te Kāhui Manu
From taoka tuku iho to contemporary moving image, Aotearoa’s birds take centre stage
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil
Exploring the relationship between tākata and whenua – people and land – through Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.
Coming Soon
Jason Greig: Blood is Thicker
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
John Nash Spurge Laurel
Illustrated in ‘Poisonous Plants, Deadly, Dangerous and Suspect', The Curwen Press, 1927.
Collection
Robert Gibbings Goats on the Mountain
An illustration from 'The Glory of life' by Llewellyn Powys, published by John Lane, 1938
Collection
Gwen Raverat The Golden Age
One of Britain’s most celebrated printmakers, Gwen Raverat was a formative figure in the wood-engraving revival in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. In Raverat’s arcadian vision of a golden age, figures exist in harmony with nature and each other. With its rich hand-colouring Raverat’s large wood-engraving draws parallels with medieval tapestries, detailing a country life in which the trials and tribulations of living in a town are left behind.
Collection
Gertrude Hermes More People
This is the largest wood engraving in the exhibition, and was cut from several blocks glued and clamped to one another. Gertrude Hermes’ interest in the human form was mirrored in her work as a sculptor, and like her contemporary Eric Gill she was able to successfully transition between both mediums. Unlike the hard-edged style of many of Gill’s wood engravings, however, Hermes’ line is sinuous and flowing with various tonal gradations throughout the work. As a sculptor she had a good understanding of human forms, which in More People seem to overlap and merge into one another.
The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016
Collection
Clare Leighton Resting
Much of Clare Leighton’s work as a wood engraver focused on rural labourers going about their lives in the countryside. These works were used extensively as illustrations in her popular books on country life during the 1930s, including The Farmers Year (1933), Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle (1935) and Country Matters (1937). The skill of Leighton’s wood engraving is evident in this work, where her exquisite and delicately cut lines create incredibly soft tonal variations. The subject is drawn from her time spent in a lumber camp on Canada’s Quebec-Ontario border. One of the most important manuals on wood engraving remains Leighton’s 'Wood-engraving and Woodcuts' from 1938.
The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016
Collection
Clare Leighton Threshing
Clare Leighton was a distinguished wood engraver in both England and America. Her parents, the popular fiction writers Marie Connor and Robert Leighton, influenced her to write and illustrate her own books. The two woodblocks shown here appear in her first book, The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry, published in 1933. The Farmer’s Year illustrates the twelve months of the year on the Buckinghamshire farm where Leighton was living. These wood engravings illustrate threshing in March and apple-picking in September.
Leighton said: “Getting to know the farmers and working with them, I learned the pattern of the year as I shared the shepherds hut at lambing time. I stooked the grain at harvest and climbed ladders to pick apples. I had come home.” Leighton felt a great connection to rural life, finding this a more honest way of living than what workers experienced in the city. This outlook was similar to that of the earlier French realists such as Jean-François Millet, who created celebratory depictions of farm life at a time when many people were leaving the countryside and moving to urban areas.
(Leaving for Work, 2 October 2021 - 1 May 2022)
Collection
John Farleigh Hemlock
The beautiful forms and shapes of a humble weed are given centre stage in this wood engraving by John Farleigh. He had a natural empathy with the wood engraving medium, as can be seen in this work with its delicate lines and contrasting areas of black and white in the background. In his role as lecturer in the book production department at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts in the 1920s he encouraged many artists to work with the medium. He illustrated numerous books and produced an important manual on wood engraving for students titled Engraving on Wood (1954).
Describing the process, Farleigh once stated:
The tool has a subtle voice. It will only confide in the understanding craftsman. […] It can become the only living thing about you. All feeling and life; all action and intensity can pass into the tool until the body clouds up and only the point of the tool is in focus. It is then that the tool will talk and all is well.
