Leo Bensemann, illustration for Oscar Wilde The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Caxton Press (detail) (1958). Peter Dunbar Collection, Robert and Barbara Stewart Library and Archives, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Reproduced courtesy of the Bensemann Family.
Leo Bensemann, illustration for Oscar Wilde The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Caxton Press (detail) (1958). Peter Dunbar Collection, Robert and Barbara Stewart Library and Archives, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Reproduced courtesy of the Bensemann Family.
This exhibition is now closed
Established in Christchurch in 1933 the Caxton Press became one of the most progressive publishers of contemporary New Zealand writing and dynamic modern typographical design.
This exhibition examines the relationships between typographers / book designers, poets, writers and artists through a selection of beautifully printed books produced at the Caxton Press over a 25-year period.
From humble beginnings Christchurch's Caxton Press had, within a few years of its establishment in 1933, become one of the most progressive publishers of contemporary New Zealand writing and dynamic modern typographical design of its era. This exhibition examines the relationships between typographers / book designers, poets, writers and artists through a selection of beautifully printed books produced at the Caxton Press over a 25-year period. Examples by leading New Zealand writers and artists include Denis Glover, Leo Bensemann, Allen Curnow, Ursula Bethell, Charles Brasch, James K. Baxter, Rita Angus and E. Mervyn Taylor.
A Caxton Miscellany: The Caxton Press 1933–58 is on display at the Central Library Peterborough.
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Date:
13 February – 17 March 2013 -
Curator:
Peter Vangioni -
Exhibition number:
932 -
Part of
Related reading: Outer Spaces
Exhibition
Leo Bensemann: Paradise Garden
14 September 2024 – 9 February 2025
A collection of Leo Bensemann’s extraordinary Mohua Golden Bay landscape paintings.
Exhibition
Face Books
10 May – 7 June 2013
Portraits in books from the Christchurch Art Gallery Library collection.
Commentary
The tide is in and the sea is like a blue mirror
I’ve always thought that if you’re a landscape artist, the working holiday must be the perfect getaway. You get to immerse yourself in an environment that may then become reflected in your art, a manifestation of your response and connection to a place. This was certainly the case for several Ōtautahi Christchurch landscape painters in the twentieth century: Doris Lusk and Onekakā, Bill Sutton and the Port Hills, Ivy Fife and the Canterbury High Country, Rita Angus and Wainui. For their close contemporary and friend Leo Bensemann it was Mohua Golden Bay, a landscape that had a profound effect on him when he holidayed there in the summer of 1965. It was a location he bonded with so much that he returned regularly to holiday and paint most summers for the rest of his life, in the process creating a remarkable body of over sixty paintings of the region.
Notes
Leo Bensemann Collection
Christchurch Art Gallery has been very fortunate in recently receiving the bulk of Leo Bensemann's library from his family which has made one of the Gallery's curators very happy.
Notes
Holloway Press 1994-2014
Last chance to view the Holloway Press exhibition at Central Library Peterborough this week so if you are in the neighbourhood and like beautifully printed, designed and hand-crafted books then make sure you head along.
Notes
Sian Torrington Call Out
Christchurch Art Gallery is excited to be working with Wellington-based artist Sian Torrington on a site-specific sculptural installation that will combine ideas, images and materials that relate to living in Christchurch now.
See below for a message from Sian to find out how you can get involved.
Notes
Outer Space programme sees Canterbury arts graduate exhibit work in Showhome
The Gallery's latest exhibition in the Outer Spaces programme, Showhome, has opened in Christchurch, featuring the disconcertingly 'perfect' works of recent University of Canterbury graduate Emily Hartley-Skudder.
Notes
Worcester Boulevard exhibition extended as publication developed
The popularity of Reconstruction: Conversations on a City has led to the exhibition being extended until 14 October, and the development of a publication.
Notes
The inner binding now on display at the library
If you've not been down to the Central Library Peterborough yet now's a good time to do it.
Notes
(Way Out)er Spaces
We're pretty pleased with what we're achieving with our Outer Spaces programme, but it's always good to see what else is out there. And I do mean 'out there'...
Notes
The ghost of studios past
In preparation for the next issue of Bulletin, Gallery photographer John and I have been out photographing some of the local artists who will be taking part in Rolling Maul when we reopen.
Interview
Silent Patterns
When we asked Tony de Lautour to produce a new work for the Bunker—the name Gallery staff give to the small, square elevator building at the front of the forecourt on Montreal Street—he proposed a paint scheme inspired by Dazzle camouflage. Associated with the geometric near-abstraction of the vorticist movement, Dazzle was developed by British and American artists during the First World War to disguise shipping. It was a monumental form of camouflage that aimed not to hide the ship but to break up its mass visually and confuse enemies about its speed and direction. In a time before radar and sonar were developed, Dazzle was designed to disorientate German U-boat commanders looking through their periscopes, and protect the merchant fleets.
Senior curator Lara Strongman spoke with Tony de Lautour in late January 2016.
My Favourite
Peter Stichbury's NDE
Anna Worthington chooses her favourite work from the Gallery collection.
Article
Sparks that fly upwards
Curator Felicity Milburn remembers five years and 101 installations in a gallery without walls.