Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist
A rare opportunity to view the work of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most adventurous and experimental modernist artists.
Made in the Pacific: A Collection of Tāoga
A selection of Pacific tāoga from the Canterbury Museum in conversation with contemporary artworks that highlight the continued strength in culture and traditional art forms.
Mark Adams: A Survey | He Kohinga Whakaahua
A comprehensive survey spanning the artist's career.
E tuwhera ana te wharetoi i kā rā e 7 o te wiki, 10am - 5pm
Ka tuwhera ki te 9pm i kā pō Wenerei
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Uruka utukore, ahokore utukore
Free entry, free wifi
Notes
Window treatments
We recently spotted these treatments applied to empty doors and windows. They are all in and around Cranmer Square.
Notes
Books, Beautiful Books
If any of our blog readers are in Melbourne over the next month or two we recommend a visit to the excellent exhibition Art and Adventure: the Fine Press Book from 1450 to 2011 which opened at the University of Melbourne's Baillieu Library last week and runs through to May.
Notes
Feeling blue
Knowing Bill Culbert will make a wonderful new piece for the Venice Biennale in June 2013 makes the impending demolition of Christchurch's Convention Centre somewhat more poignant for me. For it involves the end of his site-specific work, Blue, 2000 – in my view one of Christchurch's public art highlights.
Notes
Kiwi fortune hunters
It was surprising for many of us to read in the Press recently about the planned replacement for the broken BNZ in Cathedral Square.
Exhibition
Sam Harrison: Render
Presenting new art from Christchurch, our Rolling Maul project series begins with a remarkable exhibition of sculptures by Sam Harrison.
Notes
And so farewell...
...to Justin Paton who has cleared his desk and is off to Menton for six months.
Collection
John Bevan Ford Spöring’s View of Motuaro (from the Endeavour, 1769)
This work from John Bevan Ford’s Ngā Tohunga Waka series shows a finely detailed kākahu hovering over Motuarohia in Pēwhairangi Bay of Islands. This is a motif Bevan Ford returned to often: “I suspend these cloaks over the land and sea to express the mana of those places and of the people who live there and have lived there.” The title refers to Herman Spöring, a naturalist on board the Endeavour during Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific. In 1769 Cook landed at Motuarohia, imposing his name on ‘Cook’s Cove’, and renaming the entire area the ‘Bay of Islands’. In this work, however, Bevan Ford asserts the much longer Indigenous presence on the island, which has a rich history of Māori life and occupation.
Ngā Tohunga Waka ~ expert navigators
kākahu ~ cloak
mana ~ prestige, respect, authority
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)