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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Collection
Katie Thomas Westenra Terrace
Graphite, topography and a sense of unforeseen disruption come together in Katie Thomas’s 4.25 metre Westenra Terrace, a frottage rubbing from a road surface on the Cashmere hills, transformed by the 2011 Ōtautahi Christchurch earthquakes. Thomas found herself drawn to the clusters of lines appearing on city roads, including temporary repairs intended to prevent further damage. Her interest in these amorphous ‘found drawings’ resulted in several large-scale rubbings (she was assisted during the process by thoughtful neighbours turning up with protective orange cones). The large drawings also became reference material – plus-sized notebooks to feed into her painting practice.
(Die Cuts and Derivations, 11 March – 2 July 2023)
Collection
Foy Brothers Puahaere, Rangatira of Ngāti Pāoa
Puahaere Te Wherowhero (also known as Ema Te Aouru) was the daughter of the second Māori King, Tāwhiao Tūkāroto Matutaera Pōtatau Te Wherowhero and his third wife Aotea. Tāwhiao is said to have disapproved of Puahaere’s marriage to James Mackay, a Pākehā government official who left his wife and family to live with her. Echoing an experience common to many Māori at that time, she later faced numerous land ownership disputes in court, eventually facing bankruptcy and threats of imprisonment. Her newspaper obituary in 1901, however, remembered her as: [O]ne of the most noted chieftainesses of the district, who […] took an intelligent interest in the improvement of the conditions prevailing amongst the Maoris, and always gladly hailed the advent of anyone who had a comprehensive scheme for the advancement of the natives.Brothers James and Joseph Foy opened a thriving photographic portrait studio in the goldmining town of Thames in the Coromandel in 1872. Māori sitters were typically photographed in customary clothing and adornment to increase commercial appeal (most Māori by this time wore European-style clothing). This photograph also became the basis of an oil portrait by Gottfried Lindauer. (Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania, 2021)
Article
Seeking stillness in movement
Time didn't feel like it was on my side on the day I first saw Daniel Crooks's film Static No.12 (seek stillness in movement) (2009–10). In Sydney for just a couple of days to see the Biennale, I'd committed the cardinal mistake of the international art tourist and bitten off more culture than I had time to chew. By the time I reached Cockatoo Island and its dozens of exhibits, I was suffering from what might be called the Grumpiness of the Long-Distance Art Watcher – a state in which one doesn't absorb the artworks so much as check them off, feeling simultaneously fretful about my dwindling time and resentful about the sheer quantity of art. Though I hardly knew it then, this was the perfect state in which to test Crooks's video – a work that attempts, like no other I know, to induce an altered sense of time.
Article
Quiet invasion
The idea of peppering the vestigial city centre with portraits from the collection became part of the Gallery's tenth birthday POPULATE! programme, intended to remind all of us that the collection is, indeed, still here and in good shape.
My Favourite
Russell Clark's Cabbage Tree in Flower
I wasn’t familiar with Russell Clark’s work until I looked through the Gallery’s online collection, but I found myself immediately attracted to this painting because of its subject.
Notes
An Otira stream (also known as Mountain Rata) by Margaret Stoddart
This article first appeared as 'Otira colour captured in all its summer glory' in The Press on 28 February 2014.