Interview
Supporting a Pacific Presence

Supporting a Pacific Presence

In 2022, the Gallery received an extraordinary gift: fifty-seven works by thirty-two artists from the private collection of writer, researcher and lecturer Karen Stevenson. Of Tahitian heritage, Stevenson was raised in Los Angeles and moved to Ōtautahi Christchurch in 1995 to take up the position of lecturer in art history at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. She told Felicity Milburn just what the gift means to her.

Artist Profile
Spring Time is Heart-break

Spring Time is Heart-break

In anticipation of our major summer exhibition, curatorial assistant Jane Wallace talked to five of the artists involved in the show. Working across a range of media, the twenty-five contemporary artists in Spring Time is Heart-break have a shared interest in storytelling. They consider ideas around communication, distance, memory, the body and materiality, generating works that gently reveal contemporary forms of image-making and circulation. How can we communicate through time, or in a different tongue? What do materials reveal to us as they are transformed from one state to another? From rimurapa harvesting to cavorting queer tableaux and fish ‘n’ chips, Heidi Brickell (Te Hika o Papauma, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tara, Rangitāne, Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Apakura), Priscilla Rose Howe, Lucy Meyle, and Steven Junil Park and John Harris share their energetic practices – a small glimpse of what will be on display this November.

Artist Profile
Flitting, Gliding, Strutting, Cavorting

Flitting, Gliding, Strutting, Cavorting

Ranking highly among the privately-owned works of art that have fallen across this curator’s path is an exquisite late-Georgian era album of Indian bird watercolours. This significant, previously unpublished folio contains twenty-five delicate watercolours and three small lithographs. Most paintings were produced collaboratively in 1826 by an interesting couple, Elizabeth (Eliza) Jane D’Oyly and her husband Charles Walter D’Oyly, the latter recognised in India as “perhaps the most famous of the amateur British artists who depicted the Indian scene.” A treasured gift from Elizabeth to her sister Isabella Gilbert in 1866, the album has stayed in the same family since then. It also carries sombre themes alongside its splendours.

My Favourite
James Powell and Sons: St Mary Magdalene and Mary Mother of James at the Empty Tomb

James Powell and Sons: St Mary Magdalene and Mary Mother of James at the Empty Tomb

You may be wondering why I chose this piece of art as my favourite. Perhaps you think it’s for the craftsmanship of the stained glass. Or maybe I’ve lost someone, and the artwork brings me comfort. But you’d be wrong. This piece of art, which was rescued from the Barbadoes Street Cemetery Chapel, triggers a memory.

Commentary
Ka Oho te Taonga, Ka Oho te Tangata

Ka Oho te Taonga, Ka Oho te Tangata

In 2014, a team of University of Waikato researchers led by Linda Tuhiwai Smith CNZM travelled to Norway to present their research at the New Zealand Studies Association Conference, held at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo. The group included myself and Aroha Mitchell (researchers, artists and kairaranga), Rangi Mataamua (researcher and scholar of Māori astronomy) and Haki Tuaupiki (researcher, navigator/waka sailor).

Linda knew of my fascination with Te Rā and encouraged me to organise a visit to the British Museum while we were overseas. Emails flew back and forth between Aotearoa and London, and fortunately the times aligned and we arranged to spend two days at the museum documenting the construction of, and reflecting on the function of, this taonga.

Commentary
Whenua is a Portal

Whenua is a Portal

Manawa mai tēnei i Ahuone mai
Manawa mai tēnei i whenuatia
Manawa mai tēnei he kapunga oneone
Tēnei te mauri
o Papatūānuku,
o Tūparimaunga,
o Parawhenuamea,
o Ukurangi
E whakaata mai nei e
Kōkiri!

Commentary
Verses and Visions of Ship Nails and Tail Feathers

Verses and Visions of Ship Nails and Tail Feathers

The ways that we curate history can make all the difference in the ways we value each other now. As I round the corner on a decade spent working in heritage and curatorial collection management, my beloved museum wrapped in its gothic stone cloak is under decant. It seems the tide is always high, and my mind needs to revel in the freedom of writing in a foreign tongue about that which matters to me. So here is a collection of verses and visions, data and drama about art and artefacts intended to counter what I would describe as the lingering monocular view of histories and heritage material.

Interview
The More we Learn, The Less We Know

The More we Learn, The Less We Know

In July 2023 Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū welcomes Te Rā. This taonga from the collection of the British Museum will be on public display in Ōtautahi for three months before travelling to Auckland Museum and then returning to London. The homecoming of this taonga is a deeply significant moment. In March, pouarataki curator Māori Chloe Cull, was joined by Ranui Ngarimu ONZM (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Mutunga) and Dr Catherine Smith, two members of the research group that has led the project to bring Te Rā to Aotearoa, to talk about what this homecoming means to them.

Commentary
String Games

String Games

“If you think about it, digital, it’s something you play with string, your fingers and a language of computers, strings of binary code. The interplay of old and new. ”

Commentary
Cut It Out

Cut It Out

Make no bones about it, Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern Era is an exhibition I have long wanted to curate. I acquired my first print direct from Ralph Hotere when I was an art history student here in Christchurch many years ago. Hotere was the artist that piqued my interest in printmaking, but it is the Aotearoa New Zealand printmakers of the 1910s through to the 1950s that I love the most. Ink on Paper focuses on a generation of artists that were at the forefront of the medium when, following the printmaking revival in Britain, printmaking in Aotearoa was increasingly becoming accepted as an art form rather than simply a method of reproduction.