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.
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
Notes
Te Wiki o te reo Māori
Curator Nathan Pohio has been asking Māori artists how te reo affects them and their work
Notes
Sang by Tony Oursler
This article first appeared in The Press as 'The many faces of Tony Oursler' on 14 July 2015.
Collection
Connie Samaras Untitled (Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica)
A seal breaks through the ice and begins oxygenating; slowly opening and closing her eyes as she fills her lungs with air. Weddell seals live and breed on the ice shelves around Antarctica, further south than any other mammal on the planet. They move between holes in the ice to hunt, and have been recorded holding their breath for up to ninety-six minutes. Connie Samaras made this video while on a residency in Antarctica. Like many of her works, it invites us to consider the two-way dependency of our relationship with the environment, the fragility of the body and our tenuous grip on survival.
(Te Wheke, 2020)
The images shown here are stills taken from the video.
Collection
![La Corvette l'Astrolabe tombant tout-à-coup sur des récifs dans la baie de l'Abondance, (Nouvelle Zélande) [The Corvette Astrolabe falling suddenly on reefs in the Bay of Plenty, (New Zealand)]](/media/cache/f3/ee/f3ee101dfaa85206f23e6a6871764577.jpg)
Louis Auguste de Sainson, Felix-Achille St Aulaire La Corvette l'Astrolabe tombant tout-à-coup sur des récifs dans la baie de l'Abondance, (Nouvelle Zélande) [The Corvette Astrolabe falling suddenly on reefs in the Bay of Plenty, (New Zealand)]
Artist Louis Auguste de Sainson experienced this terrifying storm in New Zealand waters aboard the Astrolabe in 1827. As captain Jules Dumont d’Urville later described: “All we knew was that we were surrounded on every side by danger and felt that a few more violent jolts and our masts would come down.”
Notes
Still reaching out
There was a lovely article in the Nor'west News this week about students from Cotswold School enjoying a clay lesson, taught by our educator Bianca.
Collection
Paul Nash Promenade
Paul Nash was a member of England’s Society of Wood Engravers in the 1920s, and this work, one of his earliest wood engravings, highlights his instinctive approach to the medium. Rather than be tied down by traditional wood-engraving practices of precision and accuracy of line, his mark-making is free and immediate. A jagged, hard-edged perspective intensifies the scene. The waves breaking on the seawall form a series of varied, simplified patterns and shapes. The elongated figures, dwarfed by the wall, intensify the scale of the structure. Nash’s rough and intuitive techniques in cutting the end-grain wood serve to intensify the image and highlight an artist approaching a medium with much tradition under his own terms.
The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016
Collection
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I–V
Haymaker suggests the act of making at the right moment in time. It’s also a boxing term for a powerful punch. In this massive, psychedelic, sci-fi-like painting, Shane Cotton has gathered together signs, symbols and references with elements from past paintings and unloaded them into the ether of te pito o te ao, the centre of the Māori universe. Time, power, Māori culture and tradition, semiotics and art history all play out across these five panels.The carved wooden figure shown in the first panel is Arnold Manaaki Wilson’s 1956 'He Tangata, He Tangata', Cotton’s homage to this pioneering Māori artist he respected greatly. The final panel of the work is titled Staging Post, and suggests a moment for taking account and preparing to set forth again. Here Cotton acknowledges two contemporary Māori artists, both of whom feature in Te Wheke – Peter Robinson (the chain) and Michael Parekowhai (the doe).
(Te Wheke, 2020)