Exhibitions
Events
On display
UC Percussion Ensemble
Event
Past event
Foyer
Free
The University of Canterbury Percussion Ensemble performs in celebration of the exhibition Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums. Prepare for some wild sounds from this talented and exploratory collective.
In a 90-minute programme the Ensemble will enact a varied set of composed pieces performed in different places on the gallery's ground floor - many musicians and a plethora of instruments!
The Ensemble is led by UC senior lecturer Justin DeHart, a Grammy-nominated performer of contemporary musical styles from classical to pop, and from world to electronic. A former Fulbright scholar, Justin is a member of Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ), and his musical resume includes performances with the San Diego symphony, pipa master Wu Man, and pop legends including Cheap Trick.
The programme for the performance will include:
Tabla solo –Traditional
Piru Bole (1974) – John Bergamo
Quartet for Percussion (1935) – John Cage
Thrice Bitten (2019) – Robin Watson
X-Mas In Goa (2000) – Randy Gloss
Little Sea Gongs (1997) – Gareth Farr
English Suite (1975) – William Kraft
Related reading: Performance, Bill Hammond, musical performance, Music
Exhibition
Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums
3 August 2019 – 19 January 2020
A selection of work by Aotearoa New Zealand's favourite painter/drummer
Notes
Public programmes take centre stage at the Gallery this spring
Visitors to the Gallery will be spoilt for choice this month, with some of the best art in New Zealand on display alongside a rich calendar of public programmes.
In addition to amazing art and exhibitions, our impressive spring events calendar brings together a range of artist talks, films and activities, so there’s bound to be something for everyone to enjoy.
Event
Blank–Silver–Red–Black–Green
Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) responds to work in Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills with an ahurumowai of cello, poetry and taoka pūoro.
Notes
RIP Bill
All of us at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū were very saddened to hear of the death of Bill Hammond over the weekend. Bill’s contribution to the art of Aotearoa New Zealand was original and unforgettable and he occupied a special, beloved place within the arts communities of Christchurch and Lyttelton.
Notes
A Bird in the Hand
The Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation is honoured to assist the Gallery in acquiring Bill Hammond's Bone Yard Open Home for its permanent collection. But, we need your help!
Commentary
The Edge of the Sea
A vision of New Zealand’s past from 1995:
Europeans first imagined New Zealand as “a garden and a pasture in which the best elements of British society might grow into an ideal nation”... When the smoke of the colonists’ fires cleared at the end of the 19th century, New Zealand had become a different country. Māori had lost their most precious life-support system. Only in the hilliest places did the forest still come down to the sea. Huge slices of the ancient ecosystem were missing, evicted and extinguished. Our histories, however, have had neither the sense of place nor ecological consciousness to explain what has happened.
Commentary
Doctor Jazz Stomp and the Webb Lane Sound
“Bill Hammond is long, lithe and tired, and was born several years ago. Is currently pursuing a Fine Arts course and trying hard to catch up. He is deeply interested in the aesthetic implications of sleep, sports the Rat-Chewed Look in coiffures for ’68, and dreams about blind mice in bikinis. He has never been known to sing outside the confines of his bedroom. Shows a marked but languid preference for the subtle textural nuances and dynamic shadings of washboard, cowbell, woodblocks, claves, cymbal, spoons, thimbles, tambourine, and the palms of the hands in percussive contact.”
Notes
Countdown to Fifteen
Fifteen is our birthday party (guess how old we are…) and it’s less than two weeks away! It’s also the opening event for Tony de Lautour’s US V THEM, which is our big winter exhibition. We asked curator Peter Vangioni and visitor programmes coordinator Amy Marr what they’re most excited about in the incredible line-up for this grand birthday bash.
Notes
Been to some lame ‘youth’ events lately?
Now’s your chance to help create a cool event for you and your friends!
The Mix is Christchurch’s Art Gallery bi-monthly late-night event – an interactive mix of art, music, film and good people. We want to run a Mix designed, curated and for under 18s – ReMix.
Commentary
Laurence Aberhart
New Zealand artist Laurence Aberhart is internationally regarded for his photographs of unpeopled landscapes and interiors. He photographs places redolent with the weight of time, which he captures with his century-old large-format camera and careful framing. But he’s always taken more spontaneous photographs of people too, particularly in the years he lived in Christchurch and Lyttelton (1975–83) when he photographed his young family, his friends and occasionally groups of strangers. ‘If I lived in a city again,’ he says, ‘I would photograph people. One of the issues is that I even find it difficult to ask people whether I can photograph a building, so to ask to photograph them – I’m very reticent. I also know that after a number of minutes of waiting for me to set cameras up and take exposure readings and so on, people can get rather annoyed. So it’s not a conscious thing, it’s more just an accident of the way I photograph.’
Notes
Gallery Happenings: Grayson Gilmour
In early March we were lucky enough to have the incredibly talented Grayson Gilmour performing at the Gallery, supported by the equally talented Purple Pilgrims and New Dawn. I love these gigs, but there is a lot of work to be done behind the scenes to make sure that, by the time the public walk in the door, the foyer is gig ready. The process normally feels like a long, slow marathon with a sprint at the final corner. So here’s a guide to how you too can get the NZI Foyer gig-ready in five (or six) easy steps.
Interview
J.G. Thirlwell
J.G. Thirlwell is man of many monikers and even more projects: from the epic avant-garde electro-rock of his thirty-five-year Foetus act to scoring orchestral work; creating sound installations to writing cartoon soundtracks. Fellow sonic artist, Jo Burzynska caught up with the Melbourne-born but long-time New York-resident composer/producer/performer at the Gallery before the opening performance of his first ever New Zealand tour.
Notes
De Lautour / Greig / Hammond
An exhibition of recent work by Tony de Lautour, Jason Greig and Bill Hammond opens at our NG space on Madras street tomorrow. These artists have had limited opportunities to show their work since the quakes so this exhibition is well worth a visit if you have the time.
Here's a taster of some of their work.
Exhibition
De Lautour / Greig / Hammond
An exciting opportunity to see new work by leading Canterbury artists Tony de Lautour, Jason Greig and Bill Hammond
Article
A miscellany of observable illustrations
Romantic notions of gothic leanings, the legacy of Tony Fomison, devotion to rock sub-genres and an eye to the past are familiar and sound reasons to group Tony de Lautour, Jason Greig and Bill Hammond together in one exhibition, but De Lautour / Greig / Hammond is to feature new and recent work. Could all this change? What nuances will be developed or abandoned? Will rich veins be further mined? We can only speculate and accept that even the artists concerned can't answer these questions. For the artist, every work is a new endeavour, a new beginning. What may appear to the public, the critic or the art historian as a smooth, seamless flow of images is for them an unpredictable process where the only boundaries are those that they choose to invent.
Notes
What's the difference between a piano and an onion?
Answer: No one cries when you chop up a piano.
Apparently that's only the third worst piano joke of all time...
Notes
Getting Older - Flying Nun
November sees the 30th anniversary of my favourite record label, Flying Nun Records.
Notes
Playing to the Faithful
The 2011 Christchurch Arts Festival has been full of highlights, from theatre to dance to the visual arts. However, it's been the music that has made the biggest impression on me.
Notes
Number 1 Evil, Number 2 Evil, Number 3 Evil…
Finally, the chance to listen to some loud rock music!
Collection
Bill Hammond Living Large 6
There’s no big break. It’s just a slow game. —Bill Hammond, 2002
Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums (3 August 2019 – 19 January 2020)
Exhibition
Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning
The long-awaited exhibition is a spectacular survey of more than two decades of work by one of New Zealand's leading contemporary painters.
Exhibition
Coming Home in the Dark
Fourteen artists with connections to the Mainland are represented in an exhibition that explores the dark underbelly of the region's genteel appearance.
Exhibition
Canterbury Painting in the 1990s
A major exhibition celebrating the breadth and diversity of Canterbury painting between 1990 and 2000.
Collection
Bill Hammond Shag Pile
Writing in 1770 from on board the ship Endeavour, anchored 400 metres off the Marlborough coast, botanist Joseph Banks described the dawn chorus of Aotearoa as a “melodious wild musick” that started an hour or two after midnight and lasted until sunrise. It’s an image far removed from this limp, silent assembly-line of shags, which have been killed, identified and readied for stuffing to satisfy the insatiable appetites of Victorian collectors a world away. Birds often stand in for nature in Bill Hammond’s paintings. Here, their piled-up bodies bear witness to the waves of extinction that have followed human occupation here over the last 650 years – and to our willingness to destroy what we most admire.
(Absence, May 2023)
Collection
Bill Hammond Heading for the Last Roundup
Turning a traditional depiction of the New Zealand landscape upside down, this vertical triptych presents a zigzagging arrangement of curtains that fall from the sky and splice the terrain, of mountainous divides that appear upon tables and strange creatures that morph and writhe.
Early works by Bill Hammond are awash with visual sampling, splicing and mixing – from popular culture and art history. Comic book narration, the oblique angles and frames of 1950s film noir and, notably, the multiple vanishing points found in the proto-surrealist paintings of Giorgio De Chirico (1888–1978), give structure to Hammond’s alternative cityscapes of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hammond was born in Christchurch and studied at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. For a period after leaving art school he designed and manufactured wooden toys. He held his first solo exhibition in 1976 and since then has exhibited regularly. His work is represented in private and public collections throughout New Zealand. Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning (20 July – 22 October 2007) is the most recent survey of Hammond’s work to date, organised by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
Collection
Bill Hammond Watching for Buller. 2
This work was displayed with this label to mark the artist's death in 2021:
All of us at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū were very saddened to hear of the death of Bill Hammond in late January, and our thoughts are with Bill’s family and friends. Bill’s contribution to the art of Aotearoa New Zealand was original and unforgettable, and he occupied a special, beloved place within the arts communities of Ōtautahi Christchurch and Whakaraupō Lyttelton.
Bill was raised in Christchurch and attended the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in the late 1960s. In 1989, he joined a number of other New Zealand artists on an expedition to the sub-Antarctic and the Auckland Islands. This trip had a profound effect on the artist; it was from this point that his highly regarded bird paintings emerged in his practice.
Bill’s paintings are favourites for many of our visitors – works they return to over and over again. His wry sense of humour and generosity of spirit (once you got past that famous reserve) will be missed by many here at the Gallery. Recently, we had been working closely with Bill on a new publication focussed on his paintings from the past 15 years, which includes numerous tributes by artists to Bill and his work. Bill had that rare quality in an artist – someone who is highly regarded by his peers, and whose works appeal to people from all walks of life. We were honoured to have the opportunity to work with him this one last time.
Bill will be missed. We mark his passing with the deepest of respect.
Collection
Bill Hammond Bone Eagle A
Relief etching relating to the now extinct New Zealand eagle which has been a central theme in Hammond's work in recent years. Profile view of a human body with eagle head.
Collection
William Macleod Mr Hargraves, Discoverer Of Gold In Australia
This print appears as 'Edward Hammond Hargraves. The discoverer of gold in Australia.' on page 740 of the 'Picturesque Atlas of Australasia.'
Collection
Bill Hammond The Fall of Icarus (after Bruegel)
“It’s bird land. You feel like a time-traveller, as if you have just stumbled upon it – primeval forests, rātās like Walt Disney would make. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s also full of ghosts, shipwrecks, death…” —Bill Hammond Bill Hammond sailed to the remote Auckland Islands, south of Aotearoa New Zealand towards Antarctica, in 1989. Its landscape made a profound impression on him. Lined up on cliffs, staring out at the ocean, the birds of the Auckland Islands were unafraid of people, and Hammond imagined that Aotearoa looked very similar before human habitation. Different stories and timeframes and images collide in his canvasses as if in a dream, or as if fragments of consciousness were projected on to a screen. “I don’t have a tight brief”, he says. “I fumble around history, picking up bits and pieces.”
(Te Wheke, 2020)
Collection
Bill Hammond Radio On
Rock drummers and guitarists, classical musicians, DJs and flamboyant lead singers have made regular appearances in Bill’s work over the years. They are often accompanied by song titles and lyrics – The Tattooed Bride, The Look of Love, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Radio On, All Shook Up, Not Fade Away, Lose This Skin and You Make My Heart Sing. One of Bill’s early exhibitions at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in central Christchurch was titled Lines from Songs, in which he showed paintings that specifically referenced his favourite songs alongside set designs for The South Island (A Rock Opera) in four acts. The title for this painting, Radio On, is a lyric taken from one of the most iconic, upbeat rockin’ anthems of the 1970s by Jonathan Richmond and the Modern Lovers. The chorus, simply “radio on”, is one that all can sing along to – and indeed in the painting the freakish characters doing a duet, with their volcano mouths and noses, are in full voice and raising the roof: And I say roadrunner once / Roadrunner twice / I’m in love with rock & roll and I’ll be out all night … I’m in love with the radio on. Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums (3 August 2019 – 19 January 2020)
Collection
Gertrude Demain Hammond A Reading from Plato
Gertrude Demain Hammond was a prolific book illustrator whose formal art training began in 1879 at the Lambeth School of Art, alongside her sister Christiana, and continued at the Royal Academy Schools from 1885. She first exhibited in the academy’s prestigious annual summer show in 1886. In 1891 she sold a painting from the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours to the Empress Frederick of Germany – Queen Victoria’s eldest child, Princess Victoria – and in 1896 was elected to the institute. Gertrude and Christiana were recognised in the 1890s as Britain’s leading women illustrators. After Gertrude’s marriage in 1898, the sisters lived and worked from the same address at St Paul’s Studios, Hammersmith – a grand suite of Arts and Crafts studio apartments established as an urban artists’ colony.
A Reading from Plato was shown at the Royal Academy in 1903 before being sent to Christchurch for the 1906–07 New Zealand International Exhibition, where it was purchased by local art collector James Jamieson who, with his brother William, ran one of the country’s largest construction companies.
(The Moon and the Manor House, 12 November 2021 – 1 May 2022)
Notes
The Satara Player by Petrus van der Velden
Things are not always what they seem. What looks like the result of an artistic foray into exotic lands is, in fact, an 1894 portrait of a Christchurch busker who posed in the studio of Petrus van der Velden.