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Coming across an assortment of discarded furniture parts in a junk shop in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Katharina Jaeger felt a strong desire to create something that left room for the thoughts of the viewer. Pracht, a German word which loosely translates as ‘splendour’, leaves its original function far behind, taking on a new and unpredictable life of its own. Curved wooden legs that once suggested elegance and stability now seem ready to take flight – or perhaps pounce. The something – or nothing – lurking invisibly underneath the rumpled cloth promises us little in the way of rest or comfort.

(Absence, May 2023)

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- 21 July 2024)

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

This work responds in real time to sounds made by the viewer. If you cough in front of it or walk loudly, sing or clap your hands, the leaves in the hedge gently fall, forming different patterns, depending on the duration and volume of the noises you make. Afterwards, when the gallery is quiet again, the leaves reassemblethemselves as they were before. JS.02.03 “The Hedge” suggests both seasonal change and a cycle of eternal return.

(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)

In the weeks and months that followed the devastating earthquake on 22 February 2011, many Christchurch people looked in vain for a ‘hero on a white horse’ to lead the city out of crisis. Galloping creakily to nowhere, Wayne Youle’s riderless Saviour punctures the notion of a knight in shining armour. Instead, it emphasises his belief that this city’s salvation lies in the hands of ordinary people: all those who stayed – through choice or necessity – and contributed to the recovery in countless, unsung ways.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

Intrigued by the deceptions inherent in the act of painting, Tjalling de Vries often exposes tricks of the trade that usually pass unnoticed, while incorporating falsehoods of his own – like painted-on masking tape, counterfeit spills or creases and intricately layered surfaces designed to confuse and misdirect the eye. In Dead Head, transparent polyethylene takes the place of a canvas support, destabilising the picture plane as a site of illusion and suspended disbelief and allowing a view ‘through’ the painting to the wooden stretcher behind.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

An obsessively ordered, subversively witty re-imagining of Wayne Youle’s studio, ALONE TIME also evokes a more abstract space: the creative sanctuary any artist must carve out from everyday life for the serious business of making art. A bunker, a tree-house, a ‘room of one’s own’, it’s full to bursting with references to the humour, self-doubt and daily work ethic required to build and sustain an artistic practice – not to mention the magic wand.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)