In the summer of 1943, during the height of World War II, Ōtautahi Christchurch artist Rita Angus was called up by the Industrial Manpower Board to report for work at a local factory as part of the country’s war effort. Angus was a pacifist, so she chose instead to move to Wainui, a small coastal settlement in Akaroa Harbour, where she spent several weeks. Wainui was a refuge, a place of retreat and recuperation for Angus, and she embarked on an extraordinary series of small watercolours of the surrounding landscape. The intense attention to detail and her precision and clarity in applying the watercolour paints is exceptional. Angus wrote: “Wainui is charming, the bach is built on a rise overlooking the harbour and opposite Akaroa, and the weather has been rather wonderful. […] I find the bach very comfortable, most of my subjects are near here. I’m aware of much I’ve not noticed before, and how very short is one’s life. Again a hermit, I can reflect on the last few weeks in Christchurch, they were wonderful weeks to me. […] I thought I could be a more simple hermit than I am.”

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)

“The Māori name for Kaikōura is Te Ahi Kaikōura o Tama Ki Te Raki, the place where Tama Ki Te Raki cooked his crayfish. […] Another interesting thing about the mountains of the Kaikōura territory: you’ve got Te Parinui o Whiti, one of Kāi Tahu’s marker boundaries, and the highest peak, Tapuae o Uenuku. Tapuae means footsteps, the sacred footsteps of Uenuku. Uenuku is said to have been put ashore from the Uruao or Uruaokapuarangi canoe [said to have come from Hawaiki, led by Rākaihautū], and he climbed the mountain and named it Te Tapuae o Uenuku. The mountains behind have many different names; most of the Seaward Kaikōurashave Māori names. Behind them is the Awatere valley, inland; Tapuae o Uenuku is at the head of those valleys.”

—Tā Tipene O’Regan, 2016

Tama Ki Te Raki ~ mythical exploring ancestor

Te Parinui o Whiti ~ the White Bluffs

Kāi Tahu ~ tribal group of much of Te Waipounamu South Island

Uenuku ~ prominent Māori ancestor who lived in Hawaiki

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)

Australian artist Callum Morton is renowned for works that recast structures and building materials as repositories for human dreams and memories. Here, modern architecture’s humblest unit – the cinder-block – receives a rainbow paint-job that confuses and complicates its purpose. Are these the building blocks of a brighter future or the wistful relics of a destroyed utopia?

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)