B.225
Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword
In this issue of Bulletin, lead curator Felicity Milburn looks back at our involvement in delivering the Aotearoa New Zealand pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which was a huge undertaking from members of our team across many different areas. Fiona Pardington’s Taharaki Skyside opened to great excitement and acclaim in May. It was a real privilege to be there with such a strong group of New Zealand patrons and supporters, and a proud moment to see the exhibition beautifully presented by the Gallery team. Their care, professionalism and attention to detail brought the project to life. It was wonderful to witness people engaging with the exhibition and responding so positively.
Interview
Made in the Pacific
The exhibition Made in the Pacific: A Collection of Tāoga highlights the continued strength in culture and traditional art forms. Curated by Cora-Allan, it includes contemporary works by Louisa Afoa, Serene Hodgson, Jimmy Ma’ia’i, Sue Pearson, Pauline Reynolds, Doron Riki-Semu, and a selection of Pacific tāoga generously loaned by Canterbury Museum, with support from the museum’s curator of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous human histories, Hatesa Seumanutafa. We invited Karen Stevenson and Stephanie Oberg to respond to the exhibition, and to consider some of the issues that arise when presenting customary and contemporary works together.
Commentary
Taharaki Skyside in Venice
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is immensely proud of the role it has played as delivery partner for Aotearoa New Zealand’s participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. Since Creative New Zealand confirmed us as their delivery partner and endorsed our choice of Fiona Pardington as the artist in late 2024, Taharaki Skyside has drawn on the expertise, commitment and collaboration of staff across the Gallery. Seeing that collective effort realised in Venice when the exhibition opened in early May this year was a significant moment for everyone involved in the project. The Gallery team has worked closely with Fiona Pardington and her team (including Neil Pardington, creative director) and Creative New Zealand, with the support of many others, to deliver an exhibition of the highest possible standard on one of the world’s most prominent cultural stages.
Commentary
If You Build It, They Will Come
Greater Christchurch has had more bird species recorded than any other part of Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, we’re blessed with three large coastal wetlands of international significance for both resident and migratory birds. Within the Ōtautahi Christchurch district we have around 320 kilometres of rocky shoreline and coastal cliffs, almost twenty kilometres of sandy shoreline and dunes, dryland environments, tussock grasslands, podocarp forests and shrublands. There are whole other worlds beneath the tides that – as terrestrial species – most of us seldom think about. And did you know we also have around fifty islands, islets and rock stacks across the Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula coastline?
Commentary
The Funeral on Marken
Despite its sombre character, Petrus van der Velden’s Burial in the Winter on the Island of Marken is a work that has long captivated Ōtautahi Christchurch audiences. Colloquially known as The Dutch Funeral, it shows mourners crossing a snowbound landscape, reflecting the hardships of life, both unforeseen and seasonal, in a nineteenth-century fishing community in the Netherlands. It remains an expressive testament to sorrow and loss. Recent discoveries aided by historian Jan Schild, a Marken resident and meticulous researcher, deepen that emotional register.
Artist Profile
Stone, Water, Ink and Paper
In 2024, the Gallery received a remarkable archive relating to the Gingko Print Workshop and Gallery including lithographs, etchings, workbooks, papers, photographs, posters and much more. The gift was made by Jule Einhorn, a master printer who, seeing a need for an accessible specialist print studio in Ōtautahi Christchurch, started the Gingko Print Workshop and Gallery at the Arts Centre.
My Favourite
Harry Linley Richardson: Cynthia’s Birthday
I have always been drawn to, and repelled by, Harry Linley Richardson’s Cynthia’s Birthday. This odd painting – capturing a group of children, gathered around a birthday cake with the graven solemnity of a pre-Renaissance Lamentation – typifies a quality of ambiguity I most value in both painting and poetry; something I call counterplay. Borrowed from chess, counterplay is the term I use to describe the sense that a work is pulling you in two directions at once, usually with tragicomic effect.
Commentary
What is this that stands before me...
A conversation between myself and Jason Greig over coffee at Ohinehou Coffee Company sometime late April this year:
“Hey mate, I’ve been asked to interview you for Bulletin before the exhibition. Coming at it from a more metal vibe! Would you be keen?” (Knowing that Jason would, in fact, not be keen.)
“Fuck off!”