Exhibitions
Events
On display
Coffee + Art
Olivia Spencer Bower Untitled 1960. Watercolour. Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
Friends
Past event
Universo Brasserie & Bar
Free
Join the Friends for coffee and great conversation at Universo, then enjoy a 30-minute Art Bite at 12pm.
Our librarian and archivist Tim Jones will discuss Olivia Spencer Bower's time in the Pacific through two of her paintings in Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania.
No booking necessary.
Related reading: canterbury painting
Exhibition
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
30 May 2020 – 3 July 2022
Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
Collection
Olivia Spencer Bower Outrigger Canoe, Samoa
Olivia Spencer Bower took a three-month break in the Pacific after the death of her mother in 1960. Travelling by air, she visited Tahiti and the Society Islands before heading to Samoa and Fiji. Writing to her brother from an upmarket beach hotel on Viti Levu, she recalled “some mighty rough trips in tiny boats” in Bora Bora, “being hours outside the reef […] wet to the skin & hanging on”. In Samoa, she noted “seventy churches in forty miles – a missionary’s paradise anyway – all denominations competing”. In Fiji she joined a local wedding with “another European […] We had the Kava ceremony & after I had given my present I received a speech & the present of a mat.”
(Te Wheke, 2020)
Olivia Spencer Bower archive inventory
An inventory of the Olivia Spencer Bower archive collection
Olivia Spencer Bower - retrospective
Retrospective: Olivia Spencer Bower
Exhibition: 22 November 1977 - 22 January 1978
Catalogue of an exhibition organized by and held at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, written by Alison Mitchell. Reproduced with the kind co-operation of the trustees of the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation.
My Favourite
Olivia Spencer Bower's Menzies Bay
This work of art paints connections for me – to people, to this landscape and this place. My great-great-grandparents John Henry Menzies and Francis Elizabeth Menzies settled here in the 1870s. I was intrigued to discover that, way back then, the Christchurch parochial attitude was already well established. When he purchased the land John Henry encountered difficulty at the land office; he wrote, ‘A map was the first step. I was a stranger. You must not, even now be a stranger in Canterbury. Not one of the clerks would take any notice of me. It was entirely a case of favouritism.’
