Lisa Walker Necklace 2016. Fabric, stuffing. Courtesy of the artist and Funaki Gallery, Melbourne
Lisa Walker Pendant 2016. Egg beater, thread. Courtesy of the artist and The National, Christchurch
Lisa Walker Necklace 2015. Plastic, thread. Courtesy of the artist and Masterworks Gallery, Auckland
Lisa Walker Pendant 2016. Pounamu, silver, thread. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Biro, Munich
This exhibition is now closed
New works by an internationally acclaimed New Zealand jeweller.
Lisa Walker’s audaciously imagined works don’t sit comfortably within the contours of conventional jewellery. Co-opting increasingly unlikely materials – animal skins, children’s toys, even kitchen utensils – she confounds expectations, redrawing the margins in strange and delightful ways. An acute sense of colour and composition, alongside a healthy sense of irony, have made Walker one of New Zealand’s most influential art jewellers. Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū presents an exclusive exhibition of new and recent works by this internationally acclaimed artist, who received the prestigious Françoise van den Bosch Award in 2010 and became an Arts Foundation Laureate in 2015
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Date:
16 December 2016 – 2 April 2017 -
Curator:
Felicity Milburn -
Exhibition number:
1020
Related reading: Jewellery, EY
Exhibition
Talisman
5 December – 14 February 2009
Twelve New Zealand jewellery artists have made new work responding to the theme of talismans in culture. A selection of rare Oceanic talismans from Canterbury Museum are also included.
Artist Profile
Lisa Walker: 0 + 0 = 0
It might be tempting to say that Lisa Walker makes jewellery out of any old thing – but it isn’t true. The eclectic objects that form her distinctive necklaces, brooches and other body-adornments are meticulously selected and shrewdly modified before they see the light of day. She salvages her materials from an unlikely cornucopia of sources – re-presenting objects such as car parts, animal skins and even kitchen utensils through the frame of body adornment’s long history. Tiny Lego hats, helmets and hairpieces – of the kind that clog vacuum cleaner nozzles in children’s bedrooms around the world – are strung on finely plaited cords like exotic beads or shells; trashy gossip magazines are lashed together to yield a breastplate befitting our celebrity-obsessed culture; dozens of oboe reeds donated by a musician friend bristle round the wearer’s neck like the teeth of some unimaginable deep sea leviathan.
Notes
Aotearoa
A texture-rich new exhibition at Oxford showcases the considerable talents of six Canterbury artists.
Notes
Host a brooch
A number of Gallery staff are planning to take part in the final Host a Brooch event this weekend.
Article
The pleasure of making: objects taking centre stage in the space of the art gallery
Was it serendipity that the opening of Christchurch Art Gallery's Burster Flipper Wobbler Dripper Spinner Stacker Shaker Maker coincided with that of Slip Cast, a group exhibition at the Dowse Art Museum that also focused on the pleasure that artists take in manipulating materials in the process of making art?
Collection
Fiona Pardington Mauria mai, tono ano
The title of this work means ‘to bring to light, to claim again’. The seven heitiki (greenstone pendants) Fiona Pardington has photographed came originally from her iwi, Kāi Tahu, in Te Waipounamu. All are now held in the collection of Auckland Museum. Traditionally worn close to the heart, heitiki are sacred fertility symbols in te ao Māori, strongly associated with whakapapa (family connections across time). Fiona not only wanted to record the physical attributes of these old and precious objects, but also to capture their more intangible qualities, such as how they speak of the past and this place, despite being stored so far away.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
