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Photo by John Collie
Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation's Fifth Annual Gala Dinner
News
29 August 2017.
London's hottest chefs are coming to town – and you're invited to dinner!
Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation is on a mission to purchase another great work of art for our city – this time a sculpture by Ron Mueck.
To raise money for this, we’re hosting our fifth annual gala dinner. British superstar food duo Margot and Fergus Henderson will be back, and this time they are teaming up with another of London's favourite chefs, Jeremy Lee, to create a phenomenal five-course dinner for our guests.
You'll have the opportunity to bid generously on unique auction items auctioned off by Art+Object's Ben Plumbly
6pm - late, 30 September 2017
Tickets are limited. Book yours NOW!
Related reading: Foundation, special event, Ron Mueck, dinner
Exhibition
Ron Mueck
23 January 2011
Astounding in their realism and emotional power, Ron Mueck's works have made him one of the most renowned sculptors of our time. See them exclusively at Christchurch Art Gallery from 2 October.
Director's Foreword

Director's Foreword
However cold or wet it is as I write this (and certainly it’s raining at present), our September Bulletin heralds the coming of spring, and with it, the promise of growth, renewal and hope.
Notes

A Bird in the Hand
The Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation is honoured to assist the Gallery in acquiring Bill Hammond's Bone Yard Open Home for its permanent collection. But, we need your help!
Notes

Win flights for four to Singapore!
That’s right! Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū will get
you and three others to Singapore with Singapore Airlines for FREE.
Notes

Greystone Wines x Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū Art Wine
New Zealand art legends Gretchen Albrecht and Shane Cotton have collaborated with Greystone Wines to produce forty-eight magnums of their award-winning 2017 Pinot Noir. Each bottle comes in a handmade (and signed!) box so you can choose to save it or swill it.
Artist Profile

Studio Visit
I was in London last October and keen to visit Ron Mueck, but he wasn’t there: he’d gone down to Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight, where he has a studio. I spent my childhood in England, but I’d never been to the Isle of Wight. It’s in the English Channel; a Victorian retreat beloved by Tennyson, who wrote ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ here. It was also the home of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who made portraits of many of Tennyson’s guests. (When Tennyson took the American poet Longfellow to Cameron’s house for a portrait, he reportedly warned: “You’ll have to do whatever she tells you. I’ll come back soon and see what’s left of you.”)
Notes

Introducing... Limited edition art-wine and art-beer
Don't you love it when your two favourite things come together?
Notes

DO Donate
Under the leadership of new director Blair Jackson, Christchurch Art Gallery Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū has extended its focus to become a catalyst for ambitious creativity in the city, collaborating with artists to make new and adventurous works.
We have bold ambitions for our future collaborations and invite you to make them possible by investing in the creativity of New Zealand artists and our city.
Art Do 2018 is your opportunity to support the Gallery’s mission. Every dollar raised will go directly to the art – not a cent spared. Here’s how you can be part of it...
Notes

Thirsty? Drink Up This Limited Edition
Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery is launching its exclusive new art-wine and an art-beer at Art Do 2018 – the new gallery gala.
Notes

Meet The Artists Who Will Be Entertaining You At Art Do 2018…
Six of our favourite artists (and our very own boss) will be playing you chilled beats this October at Art Do 208. Pull up a seat in the designer surroundings of the Warren and Mahoney vinyl lounge and soak up the dulcet tones.
Notes

Meet The Creative Culinary Team Behind Art Do 2018
Come hungry and do dinner – a collection of contemporary food stations cooked up by some of the best and brightest in the business will feed you at Art Do 2018.
Notes

Familiar landscape for our new director
Blair Jackson has been appointed the new director of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
Interview

The London Club
In September 2017, Gallery director Jenny Harper, curator Felicity Milburn and Jo Blair, of the Gallery Foundation’s contracted development services, Brown Bread, went to London, taking a group of supporters who received a very special tour of the city’s art highlights. While there, they further developed the Foundation’s new London Club. Recently they sat down together in Jenny’s office…
Director's Foreword

Director's Foreword
As I write this, I’m still smiling with pleasure and pride at the huge success of the Gallery Foundation’s fundraising drive for our own work by Ron Mueck. Wonderful in its own right, it’s amazing to finish the 2017 calendar year knowing a sculpture by Mueck is now on its way to join the other four ‘great works’ for Christchurch.
Commentary

Anticipation and Reflection
This is a time of considerable anticipation at the Gallery: Bridget Riley’s new work for Christchurch is due for completion in late May 2017. A wall painting, it’s the fourth of five significant works chosen to mark the long years of our closure for seismic strengthening following the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010–11. It has been paid for, sight unseen, by a group of wonderful women donors, with further support for costs associated with its installation secured by auction at our Foundation’s 2016 gala dinner.
My Favourite

Peter Stichbury's NDE
Anna Worthington chooses her favourite work from the Gallery collection.
Notes

Everything is illuminated
On Saturday a gala dinner for Christchurch Art Gallery TOGETHER Foundation marked the illumination of Martin Creed's Work No. 2314, the latest artwork funded by the Foundation. Multi-coloured neon letters, over a metre tall, spell out EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT on the Gallery's south wall.
Notes

Bill Culbert, radishes, Hut #2, Bluff Oysters, eccles cakes, The Hendersons, and 250 people.
On Saturday night artist Bill Culbert and chefs Margot and Fergus Henderson helped raise the bar for another extraordinary fundraiser from the Gallery and its Foundation
Collection

Michael Parekowhai Chapman's Homer
When 'Chapman’s Homer' was exhibited at the edge of the devastated central city in 2012, it was positioned between ruin and rebuild just outside the cordon in an empty lot on Madras Street. Our bull stood beside his seated brother while a red carved Steinway piano was played upstairs in an adjacent building. Over thirty days, Parekowhai’s work caught the public imagination as a symbol of the resilience of local people. At once strong and refined, a brutal force of nature and a dynamic work of culture, Chapman’s Homer resonated with local audiences. Subsequently, a public fundraising campaign kept the bull in Christchurch.
Chapman’s Homer was first exhibited in Venice, where Parekowhai represented New Zealand at the 2011 Venice Biennale. It travelled to Christchurch after being shown at the Musée de quai Branly in Paris. Over the past year, we’ve shown it at a number of sites around the city as part of the Gallery's Outer Spaces programme, including Worcester Boulevard, Placemakers Riccarton, New Regent Street, and most recently at Christchurch International Airport. And now the bull is back – standing strong in its permanent home at Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery, welcoming visitors to our reopening exhibitions.
(December 2015)
Article

Confonting Portraiture
When it comes to creative encounters, there can be few that match the first sighting of a Ron Mueck sculpture. As with other landmark events, I suggest you are unlikely to forget exactly where you were when that formative experience took place.
Commentary

The Edge of Life
When we first saw Ron Mueck’s sculpture of A girl, my companion bent down. She stood back startled. ‘I thought I heard her cry,’ she said. Later she wept over what she had seen. Being moved so deeply was not a response to the shock of the artisanship which created such uncannily life-like figures. Rather it was to do with a different kind of shock – that of recognition of the depiction of an interior emotional world. She felt she might just have had an encounter with the human soul.
Interview

Inspiration and Consolation
In 2002, after two decades as one of the world’s most influential dealers of contemporary art, Anthony d’Offay closed the doors to his commercial gallery in Dering St., London. The years since, however, have been anything but quiet for him. In 2008, Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland acquired more than 700 works from d’Offay – a collection worth more than £125 million at the time, but acquired for the British public at its original cost price of around £27 million. Including works by Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Agnes Martin and Anselm Kiefer, the line-up is remarkable. Just as remarkable is the way the works are now being presented, in the form of more than fifty ‘Artist Rooms’ which travel not just to high-profile metropolitan institutions like Tate but also to small and often underfunded regional galleries – so that viewers might encounter Diane Arbus in Nottingham, or Ed Ruscha in Inverness. In addition to his work curating the Artist Rooms, d’Offay has continued to work closely with just one artist from his Dering St. stable – Ron Mueck. Senior curator Justin Paton spoke with d’Offay about Artist Rooms, his own formative gallery-going experiences, and his thoughts on Ron Mueck and his sculptures.
Article

Shyness and sculpture
Reporters like to begin their stories about Ron Mueck by noting that he is famously media-shy. Since television and newspapers thrive on personality, celebrity and ‘direct access' to the stars, journalists clearly feel it necessary to explain to their audiences that they won't be hearing from the artist himself. Beyond this, however, not much more gets said about Mueck's reluctance to talk. It's treated as a minor difficulty, something to be mentioned in passing before moving on to the artworks. And for that reason, surely it's not the kind of thing I should be bringing up in an official essay...
But I have a suspicion there's more to it.
Article

A Girl, In Transit
If you have ever travelled with a baby you will know that, in order to ensure a safe and pleasant trip, it's essential to plan and prepare in advance. But even then there are often hiccups to contend with on the way. It's really no different when travelling with the National Galleries of Scotland's baby, Ron Mueck's A girl – she just happens to be a little bigger...