Exhibitions
Events
On display
Barbara Garrie and Allan Smith on Contemporary Painting
Emma Fitts Brushed / Block / Ombre 2020. Acrylic and Flashe on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and The National, Christchurch. Photo: Sarah Rowlands
Oliver Perkins Untitled 2018. Size, acrylic and ink on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Mossman Gallery, Wellington
Talk
Past event
Meet in the exhibition
Free
Explore contemporary painting and the 1960s Supports/Surfaces movement in relation to Touching Sight and the work of artists Emma Fitts and Oliver Perkins.
Touching Sight artists Emma Fitts and Oliver Perkins and curator Melanie Oliver will join in the conversation.
Dr Barbara Garrie is senior lecturer in Art History at the University of Canterbury. Allan Smith is a senior lecturer at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.
Related reading: canterbury painting
Exhibition
Touching Sight: Conor Clarke, Emma Fitts, Oliver Perkins
31 October 2020 – 21 February 2021
New photography, textiles and painting from three Ōtautahi artists.
Collection
Emma Fitts Blouse and Trousers for Olivia Spencer Bower
Resembling garments in preparation, lifted from the tailor’s cutting-room table and now fixed in perpetuity, Emma Fitts here pays tribute to a significant local artist of an earlier generation. Blouse and Trousers for Olivia Spencer Bower belongs to a series of abstract cloth collages that memorialise women whose lives and work Emma has admired, and speaks to memory as well as ongoing impact. The connection is particularly strong in this work: an Ilam School of Fine Arts and Glasgow School of Art graduate, she returned to Aotearoa New Zealand to take up the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Award in 2014.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Event
Janet Abbott: Exploring Canterbury Painting 1890-1950
Janet Abott traces the progress of landscape painting in Waitaha Canterbury from van der Velden to the painters of the Canterbury School of regional painting.