Doris Lusk Canterbury Plains from Cashmere Hills 1952. Oil on canvas board. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū 1974
This exhibition is now closed
The Canterbury landscape as captured by twentieth century painters.
Canterbury features some of the most diverse and dynamic landscape in the country. But this is also a landscape marked by an overriding sense of emptiness, an awareness, particularly since the earthquakes, of the immense subterranean forces that have created this startling and visually impressive part of New Zealand. In the Vast Emptiness brings together a selection of works by twentieth-century Canterbury artists, who have responded in unique ways to this place.
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Date:
8 January – 21 August 2016 -
Curator:
Peter Vangioni -
Exhibition number:
984 -
Historical Collection Art Partner
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: In the Vast Emptiness, exhibition-984
Notes
In the Vast Emptiness by Basil Dowling
Curator Peter Vangioni reads the poem In the Vast Emptiness by Basil Dowling. Back in 2015, when re-opening from our previous forced closure, Peter took this poem as the inspiration for an exhibtion of Canterbury landscapes.
From the hand-washing point of view, this is a two minute marathon, but where's the harm in that?
See all the images at once and find out more about each one.
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A working holiday to Cass
Louise Henderson (1902-1994), whose birthday it is today, spent ten days at Cass with fellow artists Rita Angus and Julia Scarvell in May 1936.
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Heart in the high country: Austen Deans (1915 - 2011)
For Austen Deans, OBE, painting was an expression of his love of the outdoors and, in particular, the Canterbury high country.
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Sutton high-fives McCahon
Nothing made it into a W.A. Sutton painting by accident, and the white line that rises diagonally through the sky in Plantation Series II is no exception.
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Canterbury Landscape by Colin McCahon
In 2014 we purchased an important landscape work by Colin McCahon. Curator Peter Vangioni speaks about this new addition to Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection.
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Mountains, Cass by Rita Angus
This article first appeared as 'The wonders of waterolours' in The Press on 11 August 2015.
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100 years of the Cass field station
Last weekend the University of Canterbury Biology Department celebrated the 100th anniversary of the field station at Cass with a symposium on Cass followed up with a field trip to the station.
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Wainui - to the west of the long harbour
"I like Wainui, quaint, charming, rather like a Pieter Bruegel subject with the haymaking in progress." Rita Angus to Douglas Lilburn, 1943
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CASS
This week 77 years ago Rita Angus visited Cass on a sketching holiday with Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell that resulted in several paintings including the Christchurch Art Gallery's Cass.
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CASS
André Hemer's exhibition CASS is well worth a visit if you are near the Christchurch Art Gallery's space above NG on Madras street.
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Another nor’wester descends on Canterbury
Some people fear them, others revel in the unforgiving dry heat – love them or hate them the legendary Canterbury nor'wester is one of the defining features of this region in the summer months and there is a real doozy blowing outside at the moment.
Article
Exquisite Treasure Revealed
Canterbury Museum holds two albums compiled by Diamond Harbour artist Margaret Stoddart. The older of the two, containing images featured in this Bulletin, and itself currently exhibited in the Gallery, covers the period 1886–96. The album is handsomely bound in maroon, and stamped M.O.S. in gold. It contains a sort of travelogue by way of black and white photographs set amongst decorative painting, mostly of native flora, with some locality and date information.