Exhibitions
Events
On display
The Dark Horse
Film
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Written and directed by James Napier Robertson, The Dark Horse is an inspiring true story based on the life of unsung New Zealand hero, Genesis Potini, played by Cliff Curtis.
The Dark Horse also stars James Rolleston (Boy), Kirk Torrance (Stickmen, Sione’s Wedding 2 – Unfinished Business), Xavier Horan (Dean Spanley), Miriama McDowell (Dean Spanley) and newcomer Wayne Hapi.
Once a chess champion, Genesis has spent the last few years in and out of institutions, battling with severe bipolar disorder. Released from the psychiatric ward for one more chance at life, he moves in with Ariki, his gang-patched and distant brother (Hapi), and Ariki’s soon-to-be-patched teenage son, Mana (Rolleston). Needing a purpose and a reason to get out of the gang house, Genesis joins a rough-as-guts local chess club, with the wild idea of coaching the motley crew of kids to the national chess championship. On the way, he must face the responsibility that comes with being a leader, navigate conflict within the gang world and try to survive the potentially devastating strife that breaks out between him and his brother over his nephew’s future.
124min
Related reading: Film, New Zealand, Summer of Art, Free event
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Join guide volunteer guide Susan Bidwell as she discusses Rata Lovell-Smith's Hawkins in From Here on the Ground on the first floor.
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Join curator Ken Hall as he discusses Christopher Perkins's Taranaki in From Here on the Ground on the first floor.
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Sign Language Tours
Celebrate Sign Language Week and take a free guided tour of our exhibition highlights with one of our guides and a sign language interpreter.
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A free, guided art tour especially for parents with babies. Buggies welcome.
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Take a free guided tour of our exhibition highlights with one of our friendly, knowledgeable guides.
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An exhibition championing film, animation and video art made by several generations of Māori artists.
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Iconic and unseen early photographs of Christchurch by Laurence Aberhart
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A selection of watercolours by one of Canterbury’s most treasured artists.
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Canterbury modernist landscape painting from the collections of Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery, poignantly revised from within a Kāi Tahu perspective
Artist Profile
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In the strange, stunned afterlife that ticked slowly by in the first few years following Christchurch’s February 2011 earthquake, a curious note of recognition sounded through the shock and loss. As a massive programme of demolitions relentlessly hollowed out the city, many buildings were incompletely removed and lingered on for months as melancholy remains – stumps abandoned in a forlorn urban forest. Hideous, sculptural, beautiful; they bore compelling resemblance to a body of paintings created in the city more than three decades earlier.
Notes
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Meet Kylie Hansen from Christchurch. She's the lucky winner of our Art Makes Me selfie competion.
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An exhibition of Max Hailstone's most controversial and important series, using the signatures of the rangatira (Māori chiefs) who signed New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi in 1840
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Take a free guided tour of our exhibition highlights with one of our friendly, knowledgeable guides.
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Cross-cultural encounter in the Pacific shows whaling as central to the local story.