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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Late night Wednesday until 9pm
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Notes
XXXXXwords
Lucky? Hell yes! I'm just back from a month-long stint in Dunedin as the University of Otago's Otakou Press Printer in Residence, where I collaborated with Port Chalmers artist Michael Morley to print a book of his lyrics and linocuts titled XXXXXwords.
Notes
Fishwork
'One' of my favourite books published by the Holloway Press (I could just say my favourite but there are too many to chose from) is the lavishly illustrated Fishwork by Alan Loney and Max Gimblett.
Collection
Gordon Walters Black on white
Gordon Walters is best-known for work that fused the influence of European modernist art and Māori and Pacific art forms, particularly the koru motif of painted kōwhaiwhai rafter designs. Walters’ influences from European modernism included the hard-edged geometric abstractions of Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin, seen while in Europe in 1950–51. Walters made his first optically charged ‘koru paintings’ in 1956, but didn’t show them until 1966 when he first exhibited this painting in Auckland.
Walters’ adaptation of the koru has been both admired and criticised by cultural commentators. Walters himself, when discussing the motif, increasingly focused on the fine mechanics of abstraction:
'What I’ve done to the form is push it more in the direction of geometry. So that I can have in my painting not only a positive/negative effect of black and white, but I can also have a working of vertical and horizontal, which is equally important.' (Op + Pop, 6 February – 19 June 2016)
Collection
Bill Culbert Bucket, Croagnes
Since the early 1970s, Bill Culbert has explored the creative possibilities of light, capturing it in wine glasses, windows, lightbulbs, fluorescent tubes and even – as here – a simple plastic bucket. Set down on grass and fallen leaves in a wooded area close to Culbert’s home in France, this unassuming prop takes on a glowing, transcendent beauty as the sunlight fills and illuminates it.
(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)
Notes
Puzzling
During our recent collection shift - in which all of the Gallery's treasures were returned to their rightful, refurbished homes, we took the opportunity to assemble and photograph a work which has made its way into our collection post quake.
Exhibition
Paul Johns: South Pacific Sanctuary / Peraki / Banks Peninsula
The consideration of Japanese whale-hunting activity and ensuing protest in nearby southern waters has led to a reflection on our local whaling past, highlighting changing and divergent attitudes to animal life.
Notes
Paradoxical Undressing
The Word Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival 2014 was held over the weekend and featured many fascinating events, and Christchurch Art Gallery was proud to be an associated partner for some of these.
Interview
Bringing threads together
Dr Lara Strongman is the Gallery's new senior curator. She speaks to Bulletin about her passion for writing and art history, the importance of culture in a post-earthquake community and the contemporary curator.
Article
A Room of One’s Own
That experience of foreignness, of working within a different geographic or cultural context, has proved a compelling stimulus for arts practices, particularly when coupled with a studio and free accommodation.
As you read this, hundreds of artists and curators from around the world are carving out a living and working space in locations made remarkable by their strangeness and/or the opportunity to live and work away from the pressure of paid work, be it in Sweden or Southland, Dunedin or Denmark, New Plymouth or the Netherlands.