B.
CASS
Behind the scenes
André Hemer's exhibition CASS is well worth a visit if you are near the Christchurch Art Gallery's space above NG on Madras street.
Rata Lovell-Smith Hawkins 1933. Oil on canvas board. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 1981
I remember my first visit to Cass sometime in the late 1980s after a tramp to the main divide and back via the Mingha - Deception. New Zealand's most famous railway station was painted white then and I see that it was also white when Julian visited in 1986. I'm guessing Rita's painting had something to do with returning the shed back to ochre red and it's interesting to note that the railway station in Rata Lovell-Smith's painting Hawkins was also painted red back in 1933.
André Hemer CASS 2012
For me, the highlight of the exhibition is André's spray-painted interpretation / intervention of Rita Angus's painting Cass. And so with all this focus on Cass brought about by André's exhibition it was entirely appropriate that Julian Dashper's diptych Cass, recently acquired for the Gallery's permanent collection, arrived here last week.
Julian Dashper Cass 1986. Silver gelatin photograph and pastel on paper. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2012.
Related reading: In the Vast Emptiness
Collection
André Hemer CASS
Playing with ideas of distance and deletion, this work was prompted by the constantly multiplying online presence of Cass by Rita Angus, one of the most famous paintings in the Gallery’s collection. Images of, and relating to, Cass are freely available on the internet. They include legitimate reproductions, unauthorised copies and numerous responses to the original painting in the form of school projects and even Cass-themed birthday cakes. Here, André Hemer presents his own version of Cass, created using a process that echoes the many translations Angus’s painting has undergone – from traditional materials to new media and back again.
(Absence, May 2023)
Notes
Canterbury Landscape by Colin McCahon
In 2014 we purchased an important landscape work by Colin McCahon. Curator Peter Vangioni speaks about this new addition to Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection.
Notes
Mountains, Cass by Rita Angus
This article first appeared as 'The wonders of waterolours' in The Press on 11 August 2015.
Notes
100 years of the Cass field station
Last weekend the University of Canterbury Biology Department celebrated the 100th anniversary of the field station at Cass with a symposium on Cass followed up with a field trip to the station.
Notes
Wainui - to the west of the long harbour
"I like Wainui, quaint, charming, rather like a Pieter Bruegel subject with the haymaking in progress." Rita Angus to Douglas Lilburn, 1943
Notes
CASS
This week 77 years ago Rita Angus visited Cass on a sketching holiday with Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell that resulted in several paintings including the Christchurch Art Gallery's Cass.
Notes
Another nor’wester descends on Canterbury
Some people fear them, others revel in the unforgiving dry heat – love them or hate them the legendary Canterbury nor'wester is one of the defining features of this region in the summer months and there is a real doozy blowing outside at the moment.
Notes
Heart in the high country: Austen Deans (1915 - 2011)
For Austen Deans, OBE, painting was an expression of his love of the outdoors and, in particular, the Canterbury high country.
Notes
Sutton high-fives McCahon
Nothing made it into a W.A. Sutton painting by accident, and the white line that rises diagonally through the sky in Plantation Series II is no exception.
Article
Exquisite Treasure Revealed
Canterbury Museum holds two albums compiled by Diamond Harbour artist Margaret Stoddart. The older of the two, containing images featured in this Bulletin, and itself currently exhibited in the Gallery, covers the period 1886–96. The album is handsomely bound in maroon, and stamped M.O.S. in gold. It contains a sort of travelogue by way of black and white photographs set amongst decorative painting, mostly of native flora, with some locality and date information.