Matt Akehurst You are here 2011. Aluminium, steel, paint, vinyl. Courtesy of the artist
Matt Akehurst You are here 2011. Aluminium, steel, paint, vinyl. Courtesy of the artist
Matt Akehurst You Are Here 2011. Aluminium, steel, paint, vinyl. Reproduced courtesy of the artist
This exhibition is now closed
Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Robert Smithson, Michelangelo... Yes, all the big names have just arrived on the Christchurch Art Gallery forecourt.
They've been put there by local artist Matt Akehurst, whose signpost sculpture You are here tells you the exact direction and distance to a world-famous work by each of these artists, and by many more. While playing with the traditional assumption that New Zealand is something of an art-island, far removed from the international centres of culture, Akehurst's signpost also responds to the state of the arts in post-quake Christchurch. After all, with the Gallery closed for some time and its collections stored away, local art-lovers may feel newly conscious of everything – sheer distance, as well as seismic inconvenience – that can come between viewers and artworks.
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:
October 2011 – February 2022 -
Exhibition number:
889A -
Part of
Related reading: Outer Spaces
film
Matt Akehurst interview
Local Artist Matt Akehurst talks about his work for the Outer Spaces programme, You are here.
Exhibition
Tricksters
22 December 2012 – 27 January 2013
Expect the rug to be pulled out from under your feet with the last exhibition in the Rolling Maul series.
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
Jae Hoon Lee: Annapurna
November 2010 – December 2012
An immense and oddly surreal landscape glowing out from the Springboard over Worcester Boulevard is the latest addition to the Outer Spaces programme.
Exhibition
Julia Morison: Aibohphobia
June 2011 – May 2013
Julia Morison has turned the Gallery's squat grey bunker into a dizzying vision in dayglo green.
Exhibition
André Hemer: Things to do with paint that won't dry
August 2010 – January 2013
New Zealand artist André Hemer's colourful Worcester Boulevard intervention Things to do with paint that won't dry, appears to flow and spill down the side of the building.
Notes
This way art (if you can stand the hike)
Robert Smithson's Spiral jetty might be one of the most perverse works of public art ever made.
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.