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
Vanessa Wairata Edwards Puna
Using wooden letterpress blocks to form the kind of text associated with newspapers and proclamations, Vanessa Wairata Edwards creates kupu papa, or layered words, that explore how culture can be made visible. The suppression of te reo Māori and its transformation to include a written form are key parts of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history of colonisation. Edwards seeks to reconcile this fragmentation of identity in her artmaking. Here, she reveals how the hidden parts of kupu – certain letters, or meanings – can activate and connect with others. She starts with pū (used here without a macron), which has many possible meanings in te reo Māori, including source or origin. A puna is a pool or spring, but it also means to well up or flow. Tīpuna are ancestors or grandparents, while that word’s singular form is tupuna. Nestled between them is mokopuna, a grandchild or descendant. Bringing focus to the human realities of these words, but also to how they can shift and build others, Edwards presents language as a powerful current, changing and adapting, but also leading us back to our beginnings.
te reo Māori ~ the Māori language
kupu ~ word or words
tīpuna / tūpuna ~ ancestors, grandparents (dialect variations of the kupu)
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)
Collection
Shannon Te Ao Pūaotanga o te Ao
In this photograph by Shannon Te Ao, a human figure is suspended in motion, their back curved against the soft blue light of the morning. The performer moves before a projected backdrop sourced from the artist’s personal footage. It was filmed in Mōkai, near Taupō, an area close to one of the artist's family urupā, where many of his whānau are buried. A family story tells of his father’s journey, on foot, from Taupō to Mōkai to sleep beside his grandfather, who is laid to rest there. Today, they rest peacefully next to each other. The title of this work, Pūaotanga o te Ao is a play on words, meaning dawn of the world in te reo Māori and also referencing the artist’s family name. It belongs to a series by Te Ao titled Tīwakawaka, one of many Māori names for the native fantail – a messenger that moves between realms of life and death.
urupā ~ burial ground, cemetery
whānau ~ family, extended family, family group
te reo Māori ~ the Māori language
He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)
Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
Welcome to a very special edition of Bulletin. This issue is something of a change for us: the first full ‘takeover’ by one exhibition. Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa is our major show for the summer season. It occupies the entire ground floor of the Gallery and offers a snapshot of contemporary practice across Aotearoa, so it is wide in scope and rich with a breadth of materials.
Commentary
Crosstalk
“Orpheus hesitated beside the black river. With so much to look forward to he looked back.”
I drive north through darkening skies. Dim headlights diffuse a blue pallor over the sinking plains and pooling wetlands that glow in dusk. The car bends the coast before turning inland to ascend the thicket of pine that cuts across the dark island. Forest hedging the summit accedes to widening de- pressions in the land. Its recesses withhold rubbled secrets of a past that appear and recede without warning. I am driving into October.
Commentary
Spring Time is Heart-break
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū’s new exhibition Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa takes its title from one of six poems written as memorials by Ursula Bethell after the death of her partner Effie Pollen. The couple’s relationship mirrored the seasonal changes in the garden they tended together during the decade that Bethell was writing poetry on Ngā Kohatu Whakarakaraka o Tamatea Pōkai Whenua, the Port Hills overlooking Ōtautahi Christchurch. For the poet, signs of spring became a bittersweet reminder of her lost love. Reading Bethell’s work today, her evocation of intense feelings and embeddedness with the land not only reflects the ethos of our present time, but also resonates with many of the works in the exhibition. Bethell claims that we are kin with the environment, foreshadowing ideas of human/non-human interconnectedness and echoing tangata whenua understandings of whakapapa to the whenua. Artist Aliyah Winter brought Bethell to our attention while she was conducting research for a new work; our choice of title was made to encompass seasons, temporality and emotion, as might be applied to contemporary practice in Aotearoa.