Exhibitions
Events
On display
Aotearoa Art Fair: VIP Trip
Alice Alva Mother Beddock, 4805 2023. Stranded embroidery thread on linen in custom frame. Courtesy of the artist and Masterworks Gallery
Jade Townsend Sisters at Takapuna Beach 2023
Hague Yang Sonic Sphere (Diagonally Ornamented Copper and Nickel) 2015
Friends
Past event
$600 [Friends only event]
Please note, ticket sales for this trip closed on the 1st of March. If you are still interested in joining us, please email friends@christchurchartgallery.org.nz.
The Aotearoa Art Fair, in collaboration with Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū Foundation and Friends, has put together an exclusive VIP programme to celebrate the 2024 event.
The trip will commence with a visit to Gibbs Farm Sculpture Park on Wednesday 17 April and will wind up with a visit to Waiheke Island on Saturday 20 April. In between an action packed itinerary awaits, including full VIP access to the Aotearoa Art Fair and all associated events and openings. Also included are visits to galleries, private collections, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki where the Guo Pei: Fashion, Art, Fantasy exhibition will still be on display.
The Aotearoa Art Fair, New Zealand’s premier event for contemporary art, is an annual art fair that takes place in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. It is one of the most significant art events in New Zealand’s cultural calendar with over 40 galleries from around New Zealand representing the best of contemporary art in New Zealand and abroad. The 2024 edition will be held at the Viaduct Events Centre from 18–21 April 2024.
Wednesday 17 April
9am Day trip to Gibbs Farm Sculpture Park
Thursday 18 April
9am Collection tour and studio visits
Lunch at Ortolana
2–5pm VIP Art Fair preview
5–9pm Aotearoa Art Fair opening night
Friday 19 April
Auckland Art Gallery and Gallery collections visits
Lunch at Bivacco
Saturday 20 April
Waiheke visit
Lunch at Oyster Inn
Connells Bay Sculpture Park (spaces for this component of the trip are now full, studio visits are available in place of this)
* Ticket cost includes entry to all events listed on itinerary, lunch each day excl. beverages, transport to Gibbs Farm Sculpture Park, transport around the collections tour on Thursday and return transport to Waiheke Island.
* If you have either previously visited or find the size and geography of Gibbs Farm and Connells Bay Sculpture Park too daunting to contemplate, we are offering a range of more bespoke options. If you are interested in taking advantage of these, please get in touch via email friends@christchurchartgallery.org.nz or by calling us on 03 941 7356.
Related reading: Friends
Notes
How to Book Friends Tickets
To book tickets from your phone, follow these simple steps (or click here for instructions with images).
- Find the event you’d like to book for on our website www.christchurchartgallery/friends
- Scroll down until you see the Book Now option; click on the down arrow to select the date you’d like to book then click book now
- Check you are booking for the event you’d like to attend
- If you are booking for a Friends only event, you will notice the number of tickets is greyed out. To login and access Friends only tickets, click on the door image at the top of the page
- Enter your email address and password
- Now that you’re signed in, you can enter the number of tickets you’d like to purchase
- Check you’re happy with your cart before you checkout
- Let us know who is attending the event
- Let us know of any special requests and tick the Terms & Conditions box then complete your sale
- Pop your payment details in then submit. And don’t forget to save your ticket to your phone for easy access on the day of the event
Don’t forget we’re here to help so get in touch if you have any problems!
friends@christchurchartgallery.org.nz | 03 941 7356
Event
Artists at Work: EDWARDS+JOHANN
The artist collaboration EDWARDS+JOHANN will open their temporary studio at Sutton house to talk about their recent research and focus while the Artists in Residence at Sutton House for the month of May.
Event
Portrait Gallery Exhibition
Join the Friends for a talk and viewing of an exhibition, a tour of Kate Sheppard House and morning tea.
Event
Coffee + Art: May
Join the Friends for coffee and great conversation at The Thirsty Peacock, then enjoy a 30-minute Art Bite at 12pm. Bookings are not required.
Event
Friends 42nd Annual General Meeting
Please note, this date differs to the originally advertised date in March.
The 42nd AGM of the Friends of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū will be held in the Philip Carter Family Auditorium. All are welcome to attend.
Commentary
Mediating Reality
In the late 1980s, a significant shift for photography in Aotearoa New Zealand was identified in two art publications. The essays and images in these books showed how artists were utilising new strategies, breaking away from the prevailing documentary photography tradition that was, and still is, widespread in Aotearoa. Six Women Photographers (1986) was edited by artists Merylyn Tweedie and Rhondda Bosworth for Photoforum; and Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in Recent New Zealand Photography (1989) was the catalogue for an exhibition curated by Gregory Burke for City Gallery Wellington. The artists included in both publications questioned in various ways the assumptions and rules of image making, manipulating the media and making a political move from the standpoint of taking a photograph, to making one. No longer was a photograph considered a truthful representation of reality. Instead, photography was seen as a product of, and a participant in, current social and cultural values.
Commentary
Do You See?
With the death of Julie King late in 2018, art and art history in Aotearoa New Zealand lost one of its great champions and major scholars. Julie was born in Yorkshire and grew up and was educated in Alnwick, Northumberland; she moved to Christchurch in 1975 to take up a role lecturing in the newly formed art history department at the University of Canterbury. She retired three decades later, having pioneered the teaching of New Zealand art in Canterbury.
Collection
Julia Morison Dulia
In the early 1990s, Julia Morison used gold and shit in many works, exploring the idealised and base elements of human experience. She drew on the Jewish Sefiroth as a model for thinking about the relationship between the physical and the metaphysical. “Personally, I need to put some kind of order on experience for sake of sanity and negotiation,” she said. “The Sefirothic structure, or Tree of Knowledge, is really a metaphorical file and folder system for all; a conceptual paradigm for understanding everything. Putting that at the core of my practice gives me the freedom to admit everything and anything, micro and macro, metaphysical and corporeal, as legitimate content. It also gives me an interface to compose works.”
The title of this work, Dulia, is a Catholic term for worship given to saints and angels. Here Morison has pressed gold and excrement on to handmade paper balls, which are threaded together like the beads of a catholic rosary—an invitation to meditate on the relationship of the sacred and the profane, on a monumental scale.
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…
Notes
Underworld 2 by Tony de Lautour
This article first appeared as 'Painting offers a multiverse of symbols' in The Press on 21 June 2017.
Notes
President's Letter, June 2017
The new 6pm timeslot for the Friends Speaker of the Month series is proving popular, and it has been great to see so many of you coming out to hear from our fantastic speakers.
Notes
President's Welcome
The new year started with the Friends’ fantastic summer trip, visiting exhibitions at two of Canterbury’s regional art galleries.
Notes
President's Welcome
As we approach the first anniversary of the reopening of the Gallery, it seems like a good time to celebrate a year’s progress in the life of the city.
Notes
President's Letter Summer 2015/2016
This quarter the Gallery will reopen. It has been a long time coming by anyone’s standard. Although we have maintained connections through the award-winning Outer Spaces programme and nomadic, trailed around temporary gallery spaces; being able to once more step into the Gallery’s own space is an exciting prospect. I am not alone in looking forward to having the Gallery back in its rightful setting and reacquainting ourselves with the fabulous art we collectively own.
Notes
Walk the Beat
Volunteer guide Rod McKay talks about his life, being an art tourist, and guiding Gallery tours.
Notes
The Art Whisperer
Christchurch Art Gallery volunteer guide Bella Boyd talks about her love of guiding, her favourite works in the Gallery collection and interpreting art with poetry.