Whakaaturaka
Exhibitions
Taiopeka
Events
E Whakaaturia ana Ināianei
On display
Visual Connections: Wellbeing Weekend
Margaret Stoddart Old Cornish Orchard c. 1902. Watercolour on board. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2000
Special Event
Saturday 30 May and Sunday 31 May
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Free
Relax into a weekend of activities connecting art experiences with wellbeing. We have a variety of activities to listen to, learn from and help you develop self reflection in our spaces.
Saturday 30 May
Connections through Wellbeing and Art
11am / Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Janaína Moraes and Lynnemaree Patterson deliver an insightful talk on art and how it
affects our wellbeing.
Art Therapy Session
12.30–2.30pm / Education Centre
Using art to explore connection and reflection. Walk through the gallery to find artworks that resinate and create in the education centre with specialist.
Peaceworks Concert
2–3pm / Foyer
Sit, relax and listen to the weaving of music and voice into an immersive afternoon of reflection and inspiration.
Artist Art Connection Session
3–5pm / Toi Auaha, 5 Worcester Boulevard
Walk down to Toi Auaha and be welcomed in to a safe space for artists to explore connections, and reflect on practice and self motivation with certified art specialist.
Saturday and Sunday
Take a Minute or Three
See the front desk for locations
Sit and rest a while in one of our three specially placed comfy chairs and take the time to notice the artwork in front of you. Notice how you feel before and after the experience.
Colour Walks
Take a Colour Card from the front desk and let colour lead you through the Gallery. See where it takes you and discover colours.
Sunday 31 May
Raraka for Wairua
10.30am – 12pm / Education Centre
Weaving raraka with rokoā, kairaraka (weavers) will guide you through this creative workshop to make your own woven taoka. Bookings are essential.
Related reading: Public art, Talk, Workshop, musical performance, Free event
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.
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.
Notes
Face Five
Christchurch-born and internationally renowned artist Ronnie van Hout has had a huge hand in our latest outdoor installation. Quasi, a five-metre-tall sculpture of the artist's hand and facial features, was unveiled this morning on the Gallery's rooftop, next to Gloucester Street.
Notes
The regeneration must not be bureaucratised
Aaron Kreisler is Head of the School of Fine Art at the University of Canterbury. He talked to Bulletin about challenges and opportunities for the arts in our city and what art can contribute to the future of Christchurch.
Notes
What sort of city do we want our children's children to live in?
Martin Trusttum, project manager for Ōtākaro Art by the River, and founder of temporary gallery space ArtBox, writes on the role of art in Christchurch.
Interview
Not Quite Human
Lara Strongman: The title of your new work for the Gallery is Quasi. Why did you call it that?
Ronnie van Hout: Initially it was a working title. Because the work would be outside the Gallery, on the roof, I was thinking of Quasimodo, from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I was coming out of a show and research around the idea of the freak, the outsider and things that are rejected—thinking about how even things that are rejected have a relationship to whatever they’ve been rejected by. And I called it Quasi, because it’s a human form that’s not quite human as well. The idea of something that resembles a human but is not quite human.
Commentary
The hungry gap
We invited artists, academics, city makers, curators, health specialists and gallerists to comment on the challenges and opportunities for the arts in our city and what art can contribute to the future of Christchurch.
Interview
A Dark and Empty Interior
In B.167 senior curator Justin Paton documented his walk around the perimeter of Christchurch's red zone, and we featured the empty Rolleston plinth outside Canterbury Museum at the end of Worcester Boulevard. In this edition, director Jenny Harper interviews English sculptor Antony Gormley, who successfully animated another vacant central-city plinth—the so-called Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. Gormley filled the plinth with 2,400 people, who occupied it for one hour each, night and day, for 100 days. Here, Jenny asks him about his practice, the value of the figurative tradition and whether he has any advice for Christchurch.
Article
Here and Gone
In the last issue of Bulletin, senior curator Justin Paton wrote about the way the Christchurch earthquakes 'gazumped' the exhibitions on display at the Gallery – overshadowing them and shifting their meanings. In this issue, with the Gallery still closed to the public, he considers the place of art in the wider post-quake city – and discovers a monument in an unlikely place.