Mervyn Williams Chromatic Invention No 11 (A) 1969. Serigraph. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū 2009
Reuben Paterson Te Pūtahitanga ō Rehua 2005. DVD. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū 2009
Michael Parekowhai Cosmo McMurty 2006. Woven nylon substrate, pigment, electrical components. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, The Jim and Mary Barr Gift 2011
Gordon Walters Black on white 1965. PVA on hardboard. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū 2014 N Barrett Bequest Collection
This exhibition is now closed
The influence of two major twentieth-century art movements on New Zealand art.
Prepare to be dazzled as we take a look at the continued influence of two major international twentieth-century art movements—Op Art and Pop Art—on New Zealand art. Op, born in Britain in the early 1960s, and Pop, which started in the United States in the late 1950s, opened up dynamic new possibilities for making art.
Exhibition number 981
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Date:
6 February – 19 June 2016 -
Curator:
Ken Hall -
Exhibition number:
981 -
Exhibition Supporter
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: Op + Pop, exhibition-981
Notes
A Well Timed Care Package
One of the best-timed gifts my family and I have ever received arrived at our home on Mt Pleasant in May.
Notes
Chase the blues away
The first day back at work after a holiday is always a bit rubbish isn't it. And today is no exception, particularly when you add to the general post-festive blues the new layer of plaster dust and earthquake-related detritus that this particular break generated.
Notes
Don Driver 1930-2011
Our thoughts go out to the family of Don Driver, one of New Zealand's most respected artists, who recently passed away.
Notes
To the memory of Julian Dashper
One of the highlights for staff over the eight or so years that the Christchurch Art Gallery was open prior to the shakes was the opportunity to work alongside Julian Dashper on his exhibition To The Unknown New Zealander.
Notes
Untitled 1956 by Gordon Walters
This article first appeared as 'Balancing act' in The Press on 17 August 2012.
Notes
Glittering
When it comes to posting comprehensive pictures of your new exhibitions online, opinion is divided.
Notes
Selected proofs
Peter Trevelyan's exhibition Selected Proofs is currently on at the University of Canterbury's SOFA Gallery until 7th September.
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?
Article
New Zealand in the Biennale of Sydney and the Biennale of Sydney in New Zealand
and the Biennale of Sydney in New Zealand
Collection
Simon Morris June Pause
Op + Pop 6 February – 19 June 2016
Packed with an energetic sense of movement, Simon Morris’s painting gives the effect of a boldly rhythmic musical score. Its pattern, appearing at first to be random or chaotic, is found to be sequenced and repeating, and with diagonals regularly breaking up the picture plane.
Morris builds on the legacy of pioneering New Zealand geometric abstractionists such as Carl Sydow and Gordon Walters. This optical sequence was generated by a mathematical formula, which he says “creates images that I wouldn’t come up with myself. It’s like the system partly makes the work.”
Collection
Gordon Walters Black on white
Gordon Walters is best-known for work that fused the influence of European modernist art and Māori and Pacific art forms, particularly the koru motif of painted kōwhaiwhai rafter designs. Walters’ influences from European modernism included the hard-edged geometric abstractions of Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin, seen while in Europe in 1950–51. Walters made his first optically charged ‘koru paintings’ in 1956, but didn’t show them until 1966 when he first exhibited this painting in Auckland.
Walters’ adaptation of the koru has been both admired and criticised by cultural commentators. Walters himself, when discussing the motif, increasingly focused on the fine mechanics of abstraction:
'What I’ve done to the form is push it more in the direction of geometry. So that I can have in my painting not only a positive/negative effect of black and white, but I can also have a working of vertical and horizontal, which is equally important.' (Op + Pop, 6 February – 19 June 2016)
Collection
Gordon Walters Untitled
For the exhibition Untitled #1050 (25 November 2017 – 14 October 2018) this work was displayed with the following label:
“I like the rigorous quality of geometric abstract painting. I like the clarity of idea. I like the means used. I like the severity and the rigour of it. I don’t think this is a limitation. I think this is something which frees you to all kinds of investigation. It opens up all kinds of possibilities.”
—Gordon Walters, 1975