Meri Kirihimete!
Warmest holiday wishes from the Gallery team. We’re closing at 5pm on Christmas Eve and will be taking Christmas Day off but we’ll see you on Boxing Day from 10am.
Kā Kaupapa o te Wā
What’s On
Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View
New exhibition now open.
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.
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
Collection
Denise Copland Indigenous IV
With its distinctive split trunk and delicate foliage outlined against the sky, this pōkākā tree is a remnant of the diverse canopies of Aotearoa New Zealand's great forests. It is part of a larger series by Denise Copland reflecting on the precarious relationship between trees and people. In many cultures and belief systems, including te ao Māori and Christianity, trees connect us with the past as the literal or symbolic embodiments of our ancestors. Yet human presence here has devastated indigenous forests, from the introduction of animals, plants and diseases to the clearing of forests for settlement and development.
(Absence, May 2023)
Collection
Denise Copland Indigenous II
Through her art, Denise Copland has for many years expressed her concern at the destruction of the indigenous forests of New Zealand. The human impact on the natural environment is the overall theme of her ‘Implantations’ installation of 23 prints, of which this suite of five is a part. The first suite in the installation, these prints gradually move from dark to light. This refers to the gradual clearance of the native forest. Produced on a large scale, the dramatic viewpoint of the prints, looking up the trunk of the trees towards the canopy, intensifies the scale. Copland took the plates for these prints into the bush and worked on them, often using bark as well as an etching needle. Copland is one of New Zealand’s leading printmakers. She was born in Timaru and studied at the Christchurch Polytechnic and the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury. She has gone on to tutor at both those institutions. Copland has exhibited widely in New Zealand and participates regularly in international print exhibitions.
Collection
Cora-Allan Fighting for Sovereignty
Cora-Allan paints with whenua pigments sourced from the land. For Cora-Allan, and many Māori artists, whenua is inherently political. It is a symbol of what has been lost through colonisation and what is being fought for by generations of Māori land-rights activists.
When this work was first displayed in the exhibition Encountering Aotearoa in 2024, the artist wrote:
"This year on Waitangi Day, Māori and tangata Tiriti came together to protest the new government, as our nation’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, was once again presented as something that can be questioned and revised. This work is an explicit acknowledgement of the fight for sovereignty over land, language and culture that continues to consume tangata whenua and Indigenous communities around the world."
kāpia - kauri gum, resin
hiapo – barkcloth from Niue
whenua – earth, land
tangata Tiriti – non-Māori people who uphold the promise of tino rakatirataka (self-determination, autonomy) enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Te Tiriti o Waitangi – the Treaty of Waitangi
tangata whenua – Indigenous people, literally ‘people of the land’
