Notes
Trick AND Treat

Trick AND Treat

Hist and hark! Draw near and tremble,
for 'tis this night that ghosts assemble!

 

 

Collection
Wintering, after a Van der Velden study, Otira Gorge

Ann Shelton Wintering, after a Van der Velden study, Otira Gorge

A small watercolour study of a mountain stream at Otira Gorge by van der Velden provided the inspiration for Ann Shelton’s Wintering, after a Van der Velden study, Otira Gorge. However, her response to the original study in the Hocken Library’s collection, which can be viewed in the next gallery, is monumental in scale and invites comparison with van der Velden’s large paintings of the same motif. Shelton elevates the mana and significance of the small study. In travelling to the Otira region to make her response to van der Velden’s work, Shelton follows in the footsteps of the many colonial photographers who worked in the region. Her contemporary view, with the cascading torrent of the Otira River, densely forested mountain slopes and threatening storm clouds, highlights the beauty of the Otira Gorge – a landscape that has changed little since it was photographed in the mid nineteenth century. (Van der Velden: Otira, February 2011)

Notes
Art and Ethics

Art and Ethics

Recently I read an art history thesis, which covers two instances of moral panic and subsequent legal action taken against galleries for showing photographic art depicting naked children, one in the US in 1984 (Robert Mapplethorpe) and one in Australia in 2008 (Bill Henson).

Notes
Lookalike

Lookalike

So was George Lucas a fan of Jacob Epstein?

Notes
Muka Studio

Muka Studio

Muka Studio, Auckland's renowned lithographic workshop, closed on 3o September this year after operating for the past 25 years.

Notes
Going to Venice

Going to Venice

When I mentioned Neil Semple would be in Venice for the dismantling of Michael Parekowhai's On first looking into Chapman's Homer, I was a bit shy to say that I would be there too!

Exhibition

Matt Akehurst: You Are Here

Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Robert Smithson, Michelangelo... Yes, all the big names have just arrived on the Christchurch Art Gallery forecourt.

Notes
To Russia with love

To Russia with love

The Gallery owns an assortment of British eighteenth-century prints copied from paintings at Houghton Hall in England.

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