Exhibitions
Events
On display
Friends Day Trip to Oxford
Areta Wilkinson, the artist working on Whakapapa I (from Moa-hunter Fashions series) 2018. Waimakariri and Rakahuri river stones, tree stumps, kōkōwai (red ochre), silver. Image courtesy of the artist and Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland
Chris Corson-Scott Mark Adams Retouching Photographs at Studio La Gonda 2013. Archival pigment print. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, gift of the Friends of Christchurch Art Gallery, 2017
Philip Trusttum in the studio, 2018. Photo: John Collie
Friends
Past event
$75
Join us on a day trip exploring art and artists in the Oxford area. The trip will include a visit to the Arts in Oxford Gallery and shop and the studios of two local artists, jeweller Areta Wilkinson and photographer Mark Adams. THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED.
Arts in Oxford Gallery is celebrating its tenth anniversary with an exhibition of work by artist Philip Trusttum.
Cost includes transport, morning tea and lunch.
On the day, please ensure you are outside the Gallery on Gloucester Street by 9.45am so we can depart promptly at 10am.
Book by Monday 28 September.
Please email friends@christchurchartgallery.org.nz if you have any special dietary requirements by this date.
This is a Friends only event. Click here to find out more about how you can become a supporter of the Gallery and get access to special Friends events and offers.
Related reading: Friends
Exhibition
Areta Wilkinson: Moa-Hunter Fashions
8 February 2021
Artist Areta Wilkinson recalls whakapapa through object making.
Exhibition
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
3 July 2022
Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
Collection
Philip Trusttum Hit
Hit is part of a series of works Philip Trusttum made based on the dynamics of tennis. The designs, shadows and patterns of tennis nets, shoes and logos combine to form a rich tapestry that reflects a certain South Pacific flavour. The painting is Neo-Expressionist in style, and so primarily concerned with the medium of paint and its physical and emotional qualities. Trusttum has said, “What I’m doing is playing tennis by myself with the painting, if you like, as my opponent. It’s very interactive yet a lot of tension can spring from that.” Born in Raetihi, Trusttum trained at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1964. He has represented New Zealand on a number of occasions, most notably in 1982 at the ‘Sydney Biennale’, in 1984 in a solo show at the Kornblee Gallery, New York, and in 1985 in the group exhibition ‘NZNY’, New York. Trusttum has completed numerous public art commissions including Passport to the New Millennium, and a Year 2000 tapestry design.
Collection
Areta Wilkinson Hei Tupa
Areta Wilkinson combines her contemporary jewellery practice anchored in an awareness of the body with traditional Māori systems of knowledge, in which objects are often used to make connections between people and to convey stories. Previously she has made works that relate to the taonga whakarākei (personal adornments) of her Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu ancestors. “These works do not seek to replicate an existing image of the world”, she has said, “but instead alert me to a new way of seeing from the world in which I stand, whilst still maintaining a relationship with the past.”
Hei Tupa is a contemporary take on a tupa, or scallop shell, necklace from Rāpaki near Ōtautahi Christchurch. In making this work, Areta asserts the role of Ngāi Tahu tūpuna as the first artists working in the region.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Chris Corson-Scott Mark Adams Retouching Photographs at Studio La Gonda
Chris Corson-Scott’s photographs offer a strategy of poetic resistance to the hypermediated digital era. Made with analogue film and an old-fashioned large format 8x10 view camera, his works are enlarged to a scale we’re more familiar with in paintings – and the detail visible at this scale encourages us to take a slow look. He is interested in sites in which the material presence of the past is still visible. Here, in a work that speaks eloquently to the modern history of New Zealand photography, he has depicted senior New Zealand photographer Mark Adams in the studio he has shared for the past few decades with fellow analogue photographer Haru Sameshima. Adams is at work retouching his portrait of the painter Tony Fomison, which he made many decades ago.
(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)
Commentary
Of Braided Rivers and Hydro-Traders
“With 14,000km of coastline, over 180,000km of rivers, and 3,820 lakes, there’s more to the land of the long white cloud than land…” So began an advertisement in a recent Sunday Star Times. It might have been the opening gambit for a campaign devoted to water conservation but was, in fact, a promotion for the latest model jet ski: “And all you need to unlock it is the all-new Yamaha Waverunner FX HO… SAME PLANET, DIFFERENT WORLD. Yamaha-motor.co.nz.”
Product
Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
Ken Hall, Nathan Pohio, Felicity Milburn, Lara Strongman and Peter Vangioni, with Stephanie Oberg
$19.99
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
Speaker of the Month: April
Join artist Marian Maguire for a talk about her recent series The Enlightenment Project, first shown in 2022.
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
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.
Event
Aotearoa Art Fair: VIP Trip
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.
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.