Exhibitions
Events
On display
Dummies & Doppelgängers: That’s a Bit Personal
Claudia Kogachi Ghost 2022. Acrylic on canvas
Talk
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Free
Curator Felicity Milburn leads a closer look at some of the key works from this major exhibition.
Full of humour, surprise and heart, this exhibition reveals how borrowed or re-imagined bodies can help us explore what it means to be human. Dummies & Doppelgängers combines sculpture, video, photography and more from the Gallery’s own collection and around Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.
Related reading: Free event
Exhibition
Dummies & Doppelgängers
2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025
The unforgettable art of being someone else.
Collection
Claudia Kogachi Ghost
Faced with the narrow romantic archetypes of popular movies, Claudia Kogachi decided to crack the genre open a little wider with paintings that reimagine iconic moments from popular films like Brokeback Mountain, Kill Bill and The Fast and the Furious. Here, she recreates the unforgettable pottery scene from Ghost, the 1990 supernatural romance starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Inserting herself and partner Josephine into the title roles, Kogachi disrupts the heteronormativity Hollywood typically promotes, proposing a new kind of love story. Her wide-eyed stand-ins lack the glamour of their cinematic counterparts, but arguably represent something more authentic.
(Dummies & Doppelgängers, 2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025)
Artist Profile
Unfamiliars
One size doesn’t necessarily fit all. Amongst other ideas, our current exhibition Dummies & Doppelgängers explores how imagined or altered identities can help artists construct worlds that better accommodate them or others. Here, the exhibition’s curator Felicity Milburn considers how this dynamic plays out in the work of two of the featured artists.
Commentary
Turn Around and I’m Gone Again
The public lives of artworks can be occasional and itinerant—they emerge from the cosy sameness of storage into fresh locations and contexts. Many make their first public appearances alongside siblings from their maker’s studio, but later find themselves in very different company. While some resolutely maintain their identity no matter how or where they are shown, others open up to additional associations and meanings. Fittingly for a show about the power of alternative identities, several of the works in Dummies & Doppelgängers have evolved over time, shapeshifting into new lives or likenesses.
