Notes
Feeding the Beast

Feeding the Beast

When 1+ 1 = art

Notes
Puzzling

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

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

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

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.

Article
Stakes in the ground

Stakes in the ground

Last, Loneliest, Loveliest is New Zealand's first official presence at the International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, and takes its alliterative title from Rudyard Kipling's poem, 'The Song of the Cities', which gives four lines each to various cities from the British Empire, including Auckland:

Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart–
On us, on us the unswerving season smiles,
Who wonder 'mid our fern why men depart
To seek the Happy Isles!

My Favourite
Piranesi's Veduta dell’Anfiteatro Flavio

Piranesi's Veduta dell’Anfiteatro Flavio

I have long been drawn to etchings, and engravings, prints and plans, sections, even blueprints. Blue is probablygetting a bit racy though… plain black and white does it for me quite adequately.

Notes
Frozen flame, Worcester Street

Frozen flame, Worcester Street

I've been calling it Christchurch's 'everyday surrealism': the commonplace spectacles of life in a post-disaster city. Since the Christchurch earthquakes, the extraordinary has been rendered ordinary by force of daily exposure.

Exhibition

Michael Parekowhai: Chapman's Homer at the Christchurch Civic Building

Michael Parekowhai's powerful bronze sculpture of a bull standing on a piano captured Christchurch's heart. After spending the winter in his crate, he's back in time for spring.

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