What’s On
Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills
A major survey exhibition of Ngāpuhi, Te Roroa and Ngāti Kahu artist Marilynn Webb.
From Here on the Ground
Populated places and cityscapes converge with backyards, factories and remote railway stops. Open now!
Cora-Allan: Encountering Aotearoa
A major body of new work that considers the whenua from the vantage point of the moana.
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Free entry, free wifi
Colouring in: Le Stryge
This fantastical guardian creature sits on top of the north tower of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Some say it's a ghoul and others a vampire. Whatever it is, it looks a bit cheeky with its tongue poking out!
Colouring in: In the Orchard
This gorgeous painting In the Orchard is by British artist Lucy Kemp-Welch, who was famous for her incredible paintings of horses. She also became known as 'the artist who painted Black Beauty'. Have you heard of or read the book Black Beauty? It's a story by Anna Sewell about a beautiful black horse.
A Phoenix in the Fowl Run by A R D Fairburn
While our Frances Hodgkins exhibition remains closed, let's hear Mary Kisler, its curator, reading a poem about one of the works that is in it.
First published as an occasional piece in Parson's Packet, the magazine published by Wellington bookseller Roy Parsons, it passes a savage commentary on the rejection of Pleasure Garden. It appeared in Fairburn's Collected Poems with this dry observation:
The Art Gallery Committee of the Christchurch City Council rejected 'The Pleasure Garden', by Frances Hodgkins, on the advice of three experts. (It was later bought by public subscription and now hangs, without much civic honour, in the McDougall Gallery.)
Well it now hangs in our gallery with considerable honour but with the lights off and no visitors to see it. We long for this to change and continued hand-washing will hasten that happening.
Whakataka te hau
Usually on a Friday morning, our team would be enjoying some whanaungatanga at waiata practice. We’re missing seeing each other and singing together, so today's poem is the karakia Whakataka Te Hau, which doubles as one of our favourite waiata – a perfect way to start the day. Kia pai ō rā e te whanau.
Colouring in: A Garden Enclosed
This screenprint by Eileen Mayo is of Cuningham House, the big glass house in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. The building is kept warm all year so that the plants inside stay healthy and grow well. Have you been there? What sort of plants did you see?
Toroa by Hone Tuwhare
Today's poem is a long one so your hands will be scrubbed as clean as they have ever been. We are extremely grateful to the poet's son Rob for identifying this poem as 'one of our faves!' Curator Nathan Pohio is the reader and he knows the royal albatross colony at Taiaroa Heads well: his mum used to be a guide there and still lives nearby. Take your time with this one - it's well worth it!
Meet Melanie
Melanie Oliver is our new curator. It's obviously pretty hard to introduce her properly when we're in lockdown, so we asked Gallery staff to each ask her a question so you could get to know her.
Wainui by Rita Angus
In March 1943 Rita Angus spent several weeks staying at a friend’s family bach in the small settlement of Wainui in Akaroa Harbour, a refuge in the midst of World War II. It was here that she produced some of her most accomplished watercolours, small gems where the landscape is so delicately defined it’s as if she painted them whilst looking through a telescope. There are five known watercolours of Wainui and the surrounding Akaroa Harbour from this period and the Gallery is fortunate to hold four of them.
Grasses by Aileen Fisher
We leave Aotearoa New Zealand today with an American poet and an English painter, brought together just for fun. Grasses by Aileen Fisher (1906-2002) is read by Karin Bathgate who works as a Visitor Host here at the Gallery.
We hope it makes you smile for the full 20 second hand-washing routine.
Home Thoughts by Denis Glover
Today our former director Jenny Harper reads a poem that is the very essence of New Zealand, and specifically Canterbury, identity, and one we just could not leave out.
It's a decent length for hand-washing, but no harm in that. I could have selected half the works in our collection to accompany this one, but have gone for John Weeks's depiction of a bustling Cathedral Square. We very much look forward to experiencing such a scene again before too long.