Exhibitions
Events
On display
Summer Trip to Ashburton and Timaru
David Rickard A walk in the Alps (Axis Mundi) 2019. From the exhibition Echoes from the Sound Barrier on show from 28 November 2019 - February 2020 at the Ashburton Art Gallery.
Lisa Chandler Resist 2018. Acrylic on linen. Triptych. From the exhibition The Dividing Line on show from 23 November 2019 - 9 February 2020 at the Aigantighe Art Gallery.
Painting by Catherine Day from Undercurrents on show from 23 November 2019 - 9 February 2020 at the Aigantighe Art Gallery.
Friends
Past event
$85
Join the Friends on a day trip to visit the Ashburton Art Gallery and the Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru to view their summer exhibitions.
Price includes bus transport, morning tea and afternoon teas and a packed lunch.
On Saturday 1st of February at 8.45am, the group will meet outside the Art Gallery on Gloucester Street before leaving on the trip at 9am. We will return back to Christchurch approximately 5:30pm.
Book by Friday 24 January. This is a Friends-only event. For booking enquiries, email friends@christchurchartgallery.org.nz
Our first destination for the day will be the Ashburton Art Gallery where we will have a guided tour of the following two exhibitions:
David Rickard: Echoes from the Sound Barrier
David Rickard is originally from Ashburton and has returned to create Sound Barrier, a site specific work for the entrance wall of the Art Gallery. Rickard's work has been published in articles and interviews within The New York Times, The Independent, Frame, Kunstbeeld, Drome and Flash Art among others. His exhibition history spans solo undertakings in Milan, London, Basel, Rotterdam and Brussels.
Hannah Joynt and Jane Venis: Drawn to Sound
Hannah Joynt is a contemporary drawing practitioner who works in a range of media, processes and scales. Jane Venis a musician, performance artist and maker of sculptural musical instruments. The collaboration, Drawn to Sound is a performance project in which they address the question “How do we collaborate successfully with two very different creative practices in order to explore new territories within a contemporary context?”
We will enjoy our provided morning tea and refreshments on the Gallery grounds before departing for Timaru to visit the Aigantighe Art Gallery.
At the Aigantighe Art Gallery we will see the following two exhibitions:
Lisa Chandler: The Dividing Line
Nelson and German based painter, Lisa Chandler, employs various materials, collages and the newly adopted technique of trace monoprint to explore protest movements and the things that divide and define us.
Catherine Day: Undercurrents
Day is a South Canterbury artist whose delicate watercolours reference ridges, grids and contours - mapping of what lies beneath the surface and reflecting on what surrounds us.
Related reading: Friends
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.
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.
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.