Exhibitions
Events
On display
From The Green Plain to On Building Bridges: Colin McCahon and the Canterbury Landscape
Talk
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
In the context of the Gallery’s recent acquisition of Colin McCahon’s Canterbury Plains (1951), leading McCahon scholar Dr Peter Simpson will discuss McCahon’s evolving response to the Canterbury landscape between 1948 and 1952, drawing on fresh research undertaken for a major book on the artist he is currently writing that will be published by Auckland University Press in 2019, McCahon’s centennial year.
A writer, editor and curator who lives in Auckland, Peter Simpson has curated several McCahon exhibitions and has published extensively on his work in including Answering Hark: McCahon/Caselberg; Painter/Poet (2001), Colin MCachon The Titirangi Years 1953-59 (2007) and a chapter in Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953 (2016). In 2017 he received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Non-fiction.
Related reading: Talk, Free event
Exhibition
From the Sun Deck: McCahon's Titirangi
17 September 2016 – 6 February 2017
Colin McCahon’s shift to Titirangi in 1953 was a watershed moment in the artist’s career, providing the inspiration for him to develop his interest in cubism and abstraction.
Exhibition
Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953
22 August – 5 September 2016
A selection of ephemera, books, sheet music and art brought together to mark the publication of Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953 by Peter Simpson.
Exhibition
McCahon / Van der Velden
18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016
An exhibition of two of New Zealand's most respected painters.
film
Baxter and McCahon: a conversation
Two of the greats of the New Zealand art world – artist Colin McCahon and poet James K. Baxter – were friends. And fell out. As poet Gregory O’Brien says, 'They were such big spirits, I guess they couldn’t last that long in a room together.' O’Brien, Dr Paul Millar, author, professor of English and head of the School of Humanities at the University of Canterbury, and Dr Peter Simpson, writer, critic, academic and curator, are all experts on the work and personalities of these two men. On 6 March 2016 they got together before an audience at the Gallery for a fascinating discussion about Baxter and McCahon.
Commentary
Colin McCahon: Five Years in Christchurch, 1948–53
Prior to moving to Christchurch in March 1948, Colin McCahon and his family spent a little over a year living in Muritai Street, Tahunanui, on the outskirts of Nelson city. It was his most productive period as a painter to date – a phase dominated by figurative paintings with some landscapes. The products of this prolific period were brought together in his first major one-person show, at Wellington Public Library in February 1948, organised by his Dunedin friend, Ron O’Reilly. An exhibition of forty-two works made between 1939 to 1948, more than half produced in 1947, it consisted of roughly equal numbers of landscapes (including Otago Peninsula and Maitai Valley), biblical paintings (King of the Jews, Crucifixion according to St Mark ), and non-biblical figurative works (A candle in a dark room, The Family). Although it was reviewed favourably in The Listener by J.C. Beaglehole, the subsequent letters column ran hot with controversy, and it brought McCahon to national attention.
Article
Tomorrow, Book, Caxton Press, Landfall
In the decades before and after the Second World War, Christchurch experienced a remarkable artistic efflorescence that encompassed the visual arts, literature, music, theatre and the publishing of books and journals. And the phenomenon was noticed beyond these islands. For instance, in his 1955 autobiography, English publisher and editor of Penguin New Writing and London Magazine, John Lehmann, wrote (with a measure of exaggeration, perhaps) that of all the world’s cities only Christchurch at that time acted ‘as a focus of creative literature of more than local significance’.
Artist Profile
Leo Bensemann: an art venture
Leo Bensemann (1912–1986) was a pivotal figure bridging the worlds of literature and visual arts – a go-between like no other. Peter Simpson is an authority on this distinctive artist.
