My Favourite

Toss Woollaston: Untitled [Quentin (Kin) Woollaston Shearing]

Toss Woollaston: Untitled [Quentin (Kin) Woollaston Shearing]

“Teddy you fucking mongrel! Stay in your place, so help me you fuzzy prick!” my four-year-old self shouted at my hapless toy bear during Christmas lunch in 1981.

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.

Leo Bensemann: Seascape with causeway

Leo Bensemann: Seascape with causeway

The four years I spent at Elam as an undergrad straight out of high school ruined art for me. I entered the building on Mount Street in love with painting and wanting to be a painter, and I left in love with nothing.

Charles Meryon: Nouvelle Zélande, Presqu’île de Banks, 1845...

Charles Meryon: Nouvelle Zélande, Presqu’île de Banks, 1845...

1957 was a big year for me – transitions from a middle- sized hometown to life in a major city, and from high school to university, with an emphasis on courses in French language and literature. And late in that year a new display in the Canterbury Museum allowed my rudimentary interest in New Zealand history, my unstructured interest in the visual arts, and my commitment to things French, to come together around the work of an artist I had never heard of, but who had lived briefly at Akaroa in the 1840s – Charles Meryon.

Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere: Pathway to the Sea – Aramoana

Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere: Pathway to the Sea – Aramoana

My time working at Te Puna o Waiwhetū was strewn with highlights, but key among these is the experience of hanging Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert’s Pathway to the Sea – Aramoana (1991), which was also my first experience of seeing this work up close and personal. Although not the greatest work or most popular work of art in the collection, this lithograph will always be special to me. I love the sparse aesthetic, the sense of a light touch. The bold decision to not occupy the whole page as the collaborators examine restraint, notations of the relevance of place and connections.

Shane Cotton's Takarangi

Shane Cotton's Takarangi

I grew up in the Motueka Valley at a place called Ngatimoti. The Peninsula Bridge crosses the Motueka river there. It carries one lane on a timber deck joining SH 61 to Peninsula Road and the west bank of the river. The bridge is 110 years old, still doing its job of daring every kid who grows up in its vicinity to climb the railing and take the leap one day – maybe thirty feet if the summer is hot and the river sedate and inviting. By the time I’m sixteen, I’m a veteran. Veterans don’t jump. We dive, head first, eyes open, arms outstretched. There must be grace in the art of falling.

Robert Herdman-Smith's Framed Presentation to Hugh Duncanson Buchanan

Robert Herdman-Smith's Framed Presentation to Hugh Duncanson Buchanan

I’m often drawn to art that’s attached to a specific time and place, and so it was that I came across Robert Herdman-Smith’s beautiful piece – commissioned in honour of the departure from Little River of a wealthy landowner (Hugh Duncanson Buchanan) in 1908. Behind the intricately carved wooden frame, the tiny perfect lettering embellished with paintings and art nouveau-ish decorations, is a story that I’d like to know more about.

Lisa Reihana – Sex Trade, Gift for Banks, Dancing Lovers, Sextant Lesson (18550) (19205)

Lisa Reihana – Sex Trade, Gift for Banks, Dancing Lovers, Sextant Lesson (18550) (19205)

Dear Sex Trade, Gift for Banks, Dancing Lovers, Sextant Lesson (18550) (19205),

I’m surprised to see you here, and I’m conflicted.

At once I love you then I hate you. Do you remember the first time I saw you in your entirety? It was bitterly cold, an unexpected Toronto snowstorm and I hid from the sleet in the warm Galleria Italia at the newly renovated Frank Gehry architecturally designed and renamed Art Gallery of Ontario. (10-year-old Juanita did not foresee this future for herself, she was hungry for food… Now she’s hungry for art and meaning, how wanky! Te Kore, Te Pō, Te Ao, born, live, die.)

Reuben Paterson - The End

Reuben Paterson - The End

I am a clown. I spent my whole life perfecting the art of idiocy, learning my trade outside the Gallery on the corner of Worcester Boulevard and Montreal Street –  cutting my teeth as a street performer. Then one day, I was invited to step inside the Gallery, to write about art. Naturally, I felt nervous, but excited.

Rita Angus – Cass

Rita Angus – Cass

A few years ago, I walked the old Ngāi Tahu trails through Kā Tiritiri-o-te-moana The Southern Alps. I was hunting for traces of our pre-European history in the mountains. I encountered a lot of Pākehā mountain history as well. In the upper Waimakariri Basin, on my way to Tarahaka Arthur’s Pass, I wandered into New Zealand’s greatest painting – as seen on TV.

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