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
Thomas Cane Lindfield, Sussex
The building to the left, a former parsonage, is now known as Church Cottage. The building in the background is Old Place.
With thanks to Richard Bryant of the Lindfield Preservation Society for helping to identify these buildings.
Collection
Areta Wilkinson Hei Tupa
Areta Wilkinson combines her contemporary jewellery practice anchored in an awareness of the body with traditional Māori systems of knowledge, in which objects are often used to make connections between people and to convey stories. Previously she has made works that relate to the taonga whakarākei (personal adornments) of her Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu ancestors. “These works do not seek to replicate an existing image of the world”, she has said, “but instead alert me to a new way of seeing from the world in which I stand, whilst still maintaining a relationship with the past.”
Hei Tupa is a contemporary take on a tupa, or scallop shell, necklace from Rāpaki near Ōtautahi Christchurch. In making this work, Areta asserts the role of Ngāi Tahu tūpuna as the first artists working in the region.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Rita Angus Gasworks
The Christchurch Gas Company commenced operations on the corner of Moorhouse Avenue and Waltham Road in 1864. When Rita Angus painted Gasworks six decades later, she was living on the edge of a semi-industrial area two blocks away at 120 Ferry Road, lodging with her husband’s family as well as her youngest sister, Jean. Gasworks was a revelation when first shown at the Canterbury Society of Arts annual exhibition in 1933. Fellow painter Margaret Anderson later recalled “the tall chimney of this work as an event of greater artistic importance than any that had happened in Christchurch for years”. In reflecting something of the sharp austerity of the Depression years, the work also encouraged others to unlock the artistic possibilities in commonplace industrial subject matter.
(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)
Collection
Sriwhana Spong At a place not stated
Recognising her inability to describe the horror of war, Sriwhana Spong has used profiles of war trenches to create a kind of coded alphabet as a visual replacement for the insufficiency of words. These trench forms, taken from World War I maps, are punctuated with leaves that Spong collected when she travelled the Peace Route, a path between WWI cemeteries, monuments and museums in Belgium. Together, the lines of leaves and trenches bring to mind cycles of life – the growth of the leaves fertilised by those buried in the same ground.
'At a place not stated' reads like a hidden message, a reminder of those who died on unknown territory, and of the fractured and opaque wartime communication regarding the safety and whereabouts of loved ones received by family members back home.
(Jane Wallace, 2023)
