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Night Market at the Gallery
Wine, beer, food, crafts, jewellery, ceramics, plants, candles, records, books, DJs (not for purchase) and more...
Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa
A major exhibition featuring works that tell stories about personal and collective histories, communication, distance and relationships to our environment.
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Our Out of Time exhibition is closing soon.
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Late night Wednesday until 9pm
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Direct to You From Henderson
On 11 February 2011, in a cliff-top house overlooking the Avon/Heathcote estuary in Christchurch, Michael Parekowhai offered an invitation. It was to the unveiling of his Venice biennale-bound installation, On first looking into Chapman’s Homer, to be held in Henderson, near Auckland, on 13 March. But just eleven days later, that house and the city of Christchurch were turned upside down, and the future many of those present had been looking forward to that evening was upset.
Day Tripper: Over the Hills and Across the Water
A day trip to Te Waipapa/Diamond Harbour provides a great opportunity to escape the rat-in-a-maze feeling that is modern Christchurch—a feeling generated by the myriad road closures and detours and the miles of hurricane fencing that currently litter the remnants of the city. To get out amongst the harbour waters and Banks Peninsula hills is a true pleasure, even with the recent loss of one of the Peninsula’s finest buildings, Godley House in Diamond Harbour.
Cities of Remembrance
Nothing was more fascinating than ruins to me when I was growing up in one of the newest parts of the New World—new, anyway, to extensive buildings and their various forms of lingering collapse and remnant. The native people of California had mostly built ephemeral structures that were readily and regularly replaced and left few traces. Anything old, anything that promised to reach into the past, was magical for me; ruins doubly so for the usual aura of romance and loss that, like death, is most alluring to the young who have not seen much of it yet.
Here and Gone
In the last issue of Bulletin, senior curator Justin Paton wrote about the way the Christchurch earthquakes 'gazumped' the exhibitions on display at the Gallery – overshadowing them and shifting their meanings. In this issue, with the Gallery still closed to the public, he considers the place of art in the wider post-quake city – and discovers a monument in an unlikely place.
Gazumped
One of the exhibitions brought to a halt by the 22 February earthquake was De-Building, which critic Warren Feeney had described only days earlier as 'Christchurch Art Gallery's finest group show since it opened in 2003'. Seven months on, the show's curator, Justin Paton, reflects on random destruction, strange echoes, critical distance, and the 'gazumping of art by life'.
De-Building
For many passers-by, Christchurch art Gallery is identified by its dramatic glass façade—the public face it presents to the world. but De-Building is an exhibition that offers a very different view. bringing together the work of fourteen artists from new Zealand and farther afield, this group exhibition draws inspiration from the working spaces gallery-goers seldom see: the workshops, loading bays and back corridors; the scruffy, half-defined zones.
A Tale of Two Chiefs
If you have recently visited He Taonga Rangatira: Noble Treasures at the Gallery you will have been struck by Fiona Pardington's two large photographic portraits of lifelike busts of Ngāi tahu tipuna (ancestors).
Storytelling with Hanly: A show for all ages
The exhibition BLAST! Pat Hanly: the painter and his protests provides a spectacular opportunity for young and old to view the work of one of New Zealand's most cherished artists together—and for precious stories to be shared with the growing generation.
Van der Velden: Otira
A first encounter with a painting by Petrus van der Velden more than twenty years ago was the start of many years of research for Gallery curator Peter Vangioni. Peter is the lead author of the Gallery's new book on van der Velden, and talks here of his fascination with the artist's Otira works.
Confonting Portraiture
When it comes to creative encounters, there can be few that match the first sighting of a Ron Mueck sculpture. As with other landmark events, I suggest you are unlikely to forget exactly where you were when that formative experience took place.