What’s On
Night Market at the Gallery
Wine, beer, food, crafts, jewellery, ceramics, plants, candles, records, books, DJs (not for purchase) and more...
Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa
A major exhibition featuring works that tell stories about personal and collective histories, communication, distance and relationships to our environment.
Don't miss
Our Out of Time exhibition is closing soon.
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Free entry, free wifi
In Modern Times
Exhibition
In Modern Times
Exploring the expanding impact of cubism through works in the collection.
Notes
Tracking Louise Henderson
I recently wrote about Louise Henderson's painting Addington Workshops (1930) for the Press, and wanted to locate the place in which she stood to make the sketch for the work. It's a complex image and I wanted to understand more about its internal space as well as its history, but the workshops were demolished twenty years ago.
Collection
Louise Henderson The Farmhouse in Cornwall
Paris-born Louise Henderson was one of the first Aotearoa New Zealand artists to address abstraction, and became interested in architectural forms during her two years living in the Middle East from 1956–58. Made after a visit to Britain, The Farmhouse in Cornwall shows her use of built structures as a starting point for generating complex and dynamic compositions. Here, an arrangement of hard-edged forms in earthy, subdued tones deftly leads the eye, never completely allowing it to rest in one place.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov, Natalia Goncharova Des Fleurs
This print is from the folio L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Modern Theatrical Decorative Art) produced in Paris in 1919 by leading European avant-garde artists Natal’ya Goncharova (1881–1962) and Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964). Including examples of the artists’ work in lithography and pochoir (stencil) printing, the folio highlights not only their interest in stage and costume design, but also their desire to combine the forms of cubism with the representation of movement. In 1912 Larionov initiated rayonism, an artistic genre in which he investigated the effect of light rays fracturing and reflecting off the surface of objects. The prints included in L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne, with their rich decorative patterns, vibrant colours and abstract forms, highlight these concerns.
Goncharova and Larionov first met in 1898 as students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and remained lifelong companions. Both artists were founding members of leading Russian avant-garde movements, including the Donkey’s Tail (1912), and worked with the renowned founder of Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), from 1914. In 1919 they relocated to Paris, where they became prominent figures in the city’s artistic, dance and literary circles. Today they are widely regarded as the foremost Russian artists of the twentieth century.
L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne was presented to the Gallery by Anita Muling in 1979.
Collection
Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov "Un Grime" Musique de Ravel (An Actor)
This print is from the folio L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Modern Theatrical Decorative Art) produced in Paris in 1919 by leading European avant-garde artists Natal’ya Goncharova (1881–1962) and Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964). Including examples of the artists’ work in lithography and pochoir (stencil) printing, the folio highlights not only their interest in stage and costume design, but also their desire to combine the forms of cubism with the representation of movement. In 1912 Larionov initiated rayonism, an artistic genre in which he investigated the effect of light rays fracturing and reflecting off the surface of objects. The prints included in L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne, with their rich decorative patterns, vibrant colours and abstract forms, highlight these concerns.
Goncharova and Larionov first met in 1898 as students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and remained lifelong companions. Both artists were founding members of leading Russian avant-garde movements, including the Donkey’s Tail (1912), and worked with the renowned founder of Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), from 1914. In 1919 they relocated to Paris, where they became prominent figures in the city’s artistic, dance and literary circles. Today they are widely regarded as the foremost Russian artists of the twentieth century.
L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne was presented to the Gallery by Anita Muling in 1979.
Collection
Eileen Mayo Turkish Bath
Two prints from early in Eileen Mayo’s career show the strength of her natural ability. Eileen was nineteen and studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, when she made the wood engraving Skaters. She made Turkish Bath a few years later in response to an invitation to put work in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts at the Redfern Gallery, London. Her invitation came from Claude Flight, the linocut’s principal champion, who reportedly instructed her on the technique over the telephone. She had met Flight, a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Art, while working there in 1929 as a life-class model.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Lyonel Feininger Gelbe Dorfkirche, 3
The village church theme was a favourite of Lyonel Feininger’s and dates from his earliest cubist printmaking. The Yellow Church 3 was printed in an edition of 130. Feininger always had an interest in architecture and he worked in a cubist style, which suited his sharp edged architectural themes. Born in New York, in 1887 Feininger was sent to study music in Germany. He very soon changed to study drawing at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin and the Académie Colarossi, Paris. In the mid-1890s Feininger returned to Berlin, where he became a prominent illustrator for German satirical magazines. He later turned to painting and in 1919 was appointed the first master of the Bauhaus, the new School of Art of the Weimar Republic. Feininger contributed woodblock prints to Bauhaus publications, including the cover for the first manifesto. In 1937 he left Germany for the United States, eventually settling in New York. Late in his career Feininger was elected president of the Federation of American Painters and Sculptors.
Collection
Natalia Goncharova 'Une Espagnole' Illustrations du ‘Simoun' de Parnack
Russian avant-garde painter Natalia Goncharova settled in Paris with her artistic partner Mikhail Larionov in 1918. The following year they produced L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Modern Theatrical Decorative Art), the folio of sixteen lithographs and pochoir (stencil) prints from which these works came. Mainly featuring costume designs, it also celebrated their involvement with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Natalia was first drawn to the Spanish theme while with the ballet company in Spain in 1916, designing costumes for Rhapsodie Espagnole, a production that was never staged. Diaghilev is said to have been upset when told that Grime (Make-up) was his own wildly abstracted portrait.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )