B.216
Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
Welcome to the winter 2024 edition of Bulletin. At its very heart, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is built upon a collection that weaves together diverse threads from history, culture and imagination. From contemporary installations that reflect and challenge the world around us to finely crafted historical paintings, each piece tells us something about the human experience, connecting past, present and future in a continuous dialogue. The works in our collection make other statements too: about where we have come from, who we are now, and how we hope others might see us in the future. Far more than a selection of static objects, it’s a living resource that will continue to grow and change as time passes and ideas shift, and as Ōtautahi Christchurch continues to adapt and transform into a diverse and exciting cultural powerhouse.
Commentary
Down and Gritty
The art history of Aotearoa New Zealand includes a subgenre of landscape painting that is often under recognised, but enlivens the story of this country in gritty, illuminating ways. Investigating the twentieth-century painters who focused on the urban and industrial exposes a rich seam of material, with subject-matter ranging from gasworks, hydroelectric plants and foundries to factories, warehouses and cityscapes, workshops, wharves and railway yards. The artists are a combination of well known and less familiar names, but it is notable that this direction developed most strongly among the Ōtautahi Christchurch-trained: two-thirds of the artists in From Here on the Ground attended the Canterbury College School of Art, where many also taught. It was a training ground regarded as among the most progressive in the Southern Hemisphere for several decades in the first half of the century.
My Favourite
Dry September and the Dutch Funeral
Towards the end of last century I was teaching at Christ’s College. At lunchtime, like quite a few of the boys, I used to go through a gate in a brick wall to the Botanic Gardens to smoke. Then, especially if it was cold, I’d often wander, to no great purpose, through the Robert MacDougal Art Gallery.
Commentary
What Can Exhibitions Tell Us?
In a corner of Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, two self portraits are placed as if in conversation with one another. Made by Allie Eagle and Olivia Spencer Bower in 1974 and 1950 respectively, the pairing creates a striking vignette, and hints at some of the important themes that drive this exhibition.
Interview
A Shift in Place
After Encountering Aotearoa opened at Dunedin Public Art Gallery I spent time reflecting on whether I was happy with the body of work and how it conveyed the journey I had taken with my Pāpā and my relationship with the whenua.
Interview
Toloa Tales
In November and December 2023, artists and friends Sione Tuívailala Monū (Aotearoa, Australia, Tonga) and Edith Amituanai (Aotearoa, Sāmoa) went to Sāmoa together to make new video works for their forthcoming exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū: Toloa Tales. With extended family and now her mother and aunt living there, Edith has visited several times before. However, this was the first time for Sione. The relationship between Tonga and Sāmoa is one of ancient rivalry and connection, with Tonga more recently exerting colonial force in the region before European and American colonisation. Edith and Sione talked to Bulletin about their time in Sāmoa, their process of making, and how their understandings of cultural identity and migration have changed over time.
