Julia Morison Aibohphobia 2011. Acrylic paint
Julia Morison Aibohphobia 2011. Acrylic paint
This exhibition is now closed
Julia Morison has turned the Gallery's squat grey bunker into a dizzying vision in dayglo green.
Julia Morison is a local artist whose work was seen at Christchurch Art Gallery in 2006 in a survey exhibition called A loop around a loop. As the title of that exhibition suggests, Morison is an artist who likes to 'take a line for a walk', and her paintings of the last five years have featured ever more elegant and complex linear patterns, suggestive, among other things, of nerve systems, highways and labyrinths.
In this work for the Gallery Bunker, Morison plays with 'abyssal' patterns, which appear to describe a dizzying recession into visual space or a protrusion from it. The sense of visual vertigo is heightened by Morison's use of 'hi-vis green', a colour associated with the earthquake recovery teams currently occupying the Gallery. Finally the title alludes to the way the two sides of this design reverse or invert each other, so that the relationship between positive and negative space constantly twists and flips. 'Aibohphobia' is the fear of palindromes, which are words that say the same thing when read in reverse. The word itself is, naturally, a palindrome.
From a glowing billboard on Worcester Boulevard to sculpture on the Gallery forecourt, the Outer Spaces programme ensures there's art to see not just in Christchurch Art Gallery but on it. With the Gallery closed due to the Christchurch earthquakes, we're expanding the programme into the wider city. From vivid murals on huge public walls to night-time video projections in nearby houses, Outer Spaces introduces moments of surprise, humour, colour and wonder to the post-quake Christchurch streetscape.
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Date:
June 2011 – May 2013 -
Location:
Forecourt -
Exhibition number:
880A -
Part of
Related reading: Outer Spaces
Exhibition
Xoë Hall: Kuīni of the Worlds
From March 2022
A wild new mural from Kāi Tahu artist Xoë Hall celebrating atua wāhine.
Exhibition
Tjalling is Innocent
21 August – 29 October 2012
An ambitious paste-up work by local artist Tjalling de Vries on CoCa's back wall (viewable from Worcester Boulevard), Tjalling is Innocent is an Outer Spaces project presented in association with CoCA.
Exhibition
Ronnie van Hout: The creation of the world
December 2011 – August 2012
A haunting video projection by Ronnie van Hout in the window of the old house opposite the Gallery on Worcester Boulevard.
Exhibition
Julia Morison: Meet me on the other side
10 February – 25 March 2012
Julia Morison's evocative post-quake sculptures and 'liqueurfaction' paintings return to Christchurch for a special showing in a gallery space overlooking the inner-city 'red zone'.
Exhibition
I seem to have temporarily misplaced my sense of humour
November 2011 – December 2015
Stretching across a vast wall at the gateway to Sydenham, Wayne Youle's new public artwork is a shadowboard, where tools for rebuilding hang alongside many familiar but precious objects.
Exhibition
Matt Akehurst: You Are Here
October 2011 – February 2022
Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Robert Smithson, Michelangelo... Yes, all the big names have just arrived on the Christchurch Art Gallery forecourt.
Exhibition
Julia Morison: a loop around a loop
21 July – 23 October 2006
Sensual, complex and arresting, the work of Julia Morison is an intellectual order made physical.
Exhibition
Canterbury Belles: Margaret Dawson, Julia Morison and Mary Kay
19 August 1989 – 10 September 1990
A complex invitation by three artists from Canterbury investigate the means of production of master narratives. The touring exhibition by Margaret Dawson, Julia Morison and Mary Kay explore the constructions of mythologies in relation to the human body and gender.
Notes
The Bright Stuff
Before the quakes, we thought of our Outer Spaces programme as something extra – a nice complement to all the art going on inside. At present, however, with the building still occupied, the Outer Spaces are our Only Spaces, and any new addition to them counts for a lot more than it might have a year ago.
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.
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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.