My Favourite
My Favourite
Don Binney’s Canterbury Garden Bird
I have chosen Don Binney’s Canterbury Garden Bird (1970) as my favourite painting in the Christchurch collection. This painting was a major work that my husband, Brian Muir, bought for the Robert McDougall Art Gallery when he was director in the 1970s. Don came down to Christchurch in an old Kombi van specifically to paint the work. The painting shows a very solid black bird in the foreground, a fantail, resting on large green leaves. In the background are the Cashmere hills.
My Favourite
The Collection
I hit browse and there it was. The collection. I had slowly built up both a resistance and a feeling of attachment to this collection. Stuffy musty rooms from 1986. Quiet and fresh white walls when it was raining outside. Sunshine on a book through the window on a late-winter afternoon. Christchurch. This collection I recognised instantly, and I felt the repulsion as well as the comfortable feeling.
My Favourite
My Favourite
I’ve been continually fascinated by the plethora of creative interventions inserted into the wasted post-quake city. A number of works have offered sharp reminders that what we have been witnessing in the past five years is not normal.
My Favourite
Selwyn Toogood, Levin
I spent much of my adolescence in hospital, confined to bed due to a chronic illness. With a 14" TV beside me, I’d travel to imaginary places via the controller of my Nintendo games console. At the time, I couldn’t imagine walking to the letterbox, let alone experiencing the more exotic places of the world.
My Favourite
Lonnie Hutchinson's sista7
I am writing about a favourite piece from the Gallery’s collection in autumn 2015, when that collection is in storage and the Gallery is closed at least until Christmas, so I’m prompting memory by consulting the online catalogue. It’s brilliant: hundreds of images, 90 percent of the entire 7,000 collection, but to be honest, it feels a bit odd.
My Favourite
Piranesi's Veduta dell’Anfiteatro Flavio
I have long been drawn to etchings, and engravings, prints and plans, sections, even blueprints. Blue is probablygetting a bit racy though… plain black and white does it for me quite adequately.
My Favourite
Wayne Youle's The Saviour
Many months after the major February earthquake, we were told by the authorities that we were allowed to salvage whatever we could from our business – provided it fitted into a single wheelie bin.
My Favourite
Russell Clark's Cabbage Tree in Flower
I wasn’t familiar with Russell Clark’s work until I looked through the Gallery’s online collection, but I found myself immediately attracted to this painting because of its subject.