John Oakley was a sociable, well-connected Ōtautahi Christchurch artist whose Cambridge Terrace studio parties in the early 1930s included such illustrious company as Olivia Spencer Bower, Rita Angus, Louise Henderson, Viola Macmillan Brown, Ngaio Marsh and Russell Clark. Having studied and taught at the Canterbury College School of Art, Oakley left in 1935 to absorb the latest developments in modern art in Britain and Europe. Returning ten months later, he painted The Courtyard while art master at Marlborough Boys’ College in Te Waiharakeke Blenheim. With its distorted perspective and hard-edged, modernist approach, the work reveals this fresh impetus. A note on the back records that this was the view from his bedroom window at the Club Hotel behind the Blenheim Chief Post Office.

(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)

In the exhibition Springtime is Heartbreak (25 November 2023 to 19 May 2024) , this work was displayed with three others by the same artist with this label:

In this series of large works Priscilla Rose Howe imagines queer alternatives for how we feel and relate to each other. The works express the sensation of experiencing multiple emotions at once loneliness and excitement, or heartbreak and arousal - and allow contradictory feelings to coexist. Taking inspiration from horror films with femme protagonists, Priscilla similarly uses fear and disgust. Queasy perspectives, exaggerated features and lusting bodies develop queer spaces of refuge that exist beyond ordinary words and logic. Here, the subjects of Priscilla's drawings can escape the constant performance of 'normality' demanded by daily life.

The titles of the work signal a desire to create a new, messier world by turning our current one inside-out.