B.

Students will take away an appreciation of art and consider a selection works that can cover a range of subjects, styles, media and purposes. The works viewed will be a selection from our current exhibitions. Students are expected to discuss and question what they see. Tours can be tailored to all levels.

Bookings essential.

We'll be offering these as soon as we re-open!

Looking for things to do while you're stuck at home? Take a look at these worksheets and activities.

Pacific Printmaking
He Waka Eke Noa
Waka Huia

Explore our set of colouring activities based on works from our collection - check them out here. 

Have a go at curating your own exhibition with the works in our collection using My Gallery 

We would love to see your work when it's done - take a photo and send it to schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz or tag us on social media!

This lesson offers students the opportunity to discover the work of local artists Oliver Perkins, Conor Clarke and Emma Fitts. During a tour of Touching Sight, students will discuss how each artist has explored different processes of making and ways of seeing through playfully created photography, textiles and painting. Your students will then create their own masterpiece of collaged and woven colour to keep.

Available 31 October 2020 - 21 February 2021

Students will tour the Gallery and explore a range of Polynesian artforms including woodblock, Tivaevae and Tapa. During the tour they will make recordings of patterns and motifs used in the work they see. They will use their drawings to create their own Polynesian print. Students will be working individually and in groups during this lesson.

Take a guided tour of our exhibition Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania. Students will discuss a range of artists work and explore ideas of navigation, belonging, identity and how we are connected across time and place. Students will then use Ani O'Neill's work 'etu iti as inspiration to create their own star out of a range of materials to add to a collaborative work for your classroom.

Take a self-guided tour of our exhibition Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania. Student workbooks are available to support students while they explore the spaces - download a copy below or email schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz to organise a printed class set.

All About Te Wheke

Wheke means octopus in te reo Māori. For many cultures around Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa / the Pacific Ocean, this resourceful, resilient, adventurous creature is a symbol of early voyages of exploration and migration from the Polynesian homelands of Hawaiki. Its long tentacles stretch out across the ocean to Tonga, Kiribati, Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa New Zealand. In this selection of art from the Gallery collection and beyond, Te Wheke offers a way to understand how we are connected across time and place.

In Aotearoa, conventional art history tells the stories of art that ties us to Britain and Europe. The art in Te Wheke looks in a different direction – from the Pacific outwards. Artists reach back to Polynesia and out into the world beyond, finding connections that are old and new.

Oceania is large and glorious. Like the octopus, it connects us along Pacific pathways with ideas of navigation, belonging and identity. Te Wheke opens up conversations about the journeys, tensions and connections that shape our past, present and future.

Discover the work of one of New Zealand's leading artists in Seeking a Balance.
Students will consider Graham Bennett's use of materials and each work's connection to the environment, and learn how the works were planned and made. They will then work collaboratively to explore form and space in a construction challenge. Works can be taken back to school or photographed and deconstructed at the end of the lesson.

Available 31 October 2020 – 21 February 2021

Discover the bold, expressive works of Max Gimblett in Ocean Wheel: Max Gimblett. During a tour of the exhibition, students will think about different ways of making and the use of colour and gesture in Gimblett's work. In the education centre, students are then challenged to think creatively while exploring the elements of art and properties of ink by creating a series of ink drawings using a range of tools and techniques.

Available from 31 July - 15 November 2020

Join Emma Fitts, Conor Clarke or Oliver Perkins for an artist-led workshop based on their work in our upcoming exhibition Touching Sight. A fantastic opportunity for your class to work with established artists and experiment with different disciplines and materials. 

Bookings are essential as places are limited.

Emma Fitts
Available 16–20 November
This workshop will encourage students to explore ideas of collage, layering and textiles. With a focus on bags and pockets, students will work with canvas and rope as they take their materials through a number of different techniques to create a new kind of garment that reflects the environment around them. Emma is known for her sculptural textile works, which are informed by architecture, histories and storytelling.

Conor Clarke
Available 23–27 November
In this workshop students will be challlenged to think about how we perceive and represent nature. Conor will discuss her collaboration with the blind and low vision association to develop audio descriptions that are part of her work in Touching Sight. Students will then examine the medium of photography through a series of hands-on activities including the cyanotype process. Conor is known for her use of photography to explore themes such as ecology and land use.

Oliver Perkins
Available 30 November – 4 December
In this workshop students will explore elements of abstract painting with a collaborative workshop that focuses on the experimental, collage, composition and colour. Students will be encouraged to consider collective working methods rather than singular vision and stylistic iterations. Oliver is known for his playful abstract works that take an unconventional approach to the painted canvas.

Experience Dane Mitchell's Post hoc with your students on a guided tour. Post hoc was first seen at the 2019 Venice Biennale and explores countless phenomena that existed, such as languages, borders, species and eras, but are now lost. The phenomena are read out by an automated voice in an echo-free chamber inside the Gallery, and broadcast across the Christchurch CBD via three, six-metre tall disguised cell-towers, or franken-pines!

Available 31 July - 1 November

Your students will tour the Gallery and look at a range of artworks that feature Māori motif and design. In the classroom, students will learn four common shapes used in kōwhaiwhai and learn how the shapes are used. The class will use these shapes to create a cut-out design based on Lonnie Hutchinson's work Sista7.