This exhibition is now closed
When in January the National Art Gallery invited us to collaborate in presenting with the Fletcher Challenge Corporation the fabulous "Oro del Peru" exhibition, we were eager to co-operate.
Wherever it has been shown, the Treasures of the Incas collection of 254 objects from the Peruvian Gold Museum in Lima has attracted thousands of fascinated visitors eager to see the exquisite craftsmanship and golden objects of the Inca people and learn about the way of life of this vanished South American civilisation.
This collection of Inca treasures was begun during the 1930s by Miguel Mujica Gallo after the systematic looting of the Peruvian tombs came to his attention. In order to preserve and codify his country's seminal culture, he began buying some of the most important pieces. In 1966 he established the Museum "Oro del Peru" to publicly display his, by then, vast assortment of ancient Peruvian feather-work, textiles, jewellery and objects of gold, silver and copper.
To an economy more accustomed to admiring gold for the capital it represents it comes as a surprise to learn the soft, non-corroding metal was valued by the inhabitants of old Peru not as hard currency but for its aesthetic beauty alone. Gold was discovered in earliest times and, while the nuggets were most likely first used as they could be shaped by hammers without resorting to heat, the systematic mining and smelting of ore and gold dust could have started before the Christian era.
The Peruvians covered temple walls in gold, it was used to decorate the apparel of priests and princes, it had its place in religious ritual and as a mark of class distinction, but it was a means of exchange.
The objects of display in Treasures of the Inca were all found in the ground, in graves for the most part because, like the Egyptians, the nobility of Peru customarily packed their tombs with all they would need in the afterlife. Yet the story would not be complete without giving credit to the nameless Indians who, after witnessing the ruthless Spanish lust for gold, carefully hid whatever objects they could so that later, more considerate generations might witness and wonder at the glory that was Peru.
('ORO del PERU: Treasures of the Incas', Bulletin, No.45, May/June 1986, pp.1-2)
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Date:
12 June – 13 July 1986 -
Location:
Robert McDougall Art Gallery - main gallery -
Exhibition number:
368
Related reading: Jewellery
Bulletin 45
May/June 1986
Contents include:
Oro del Peru exhibition
Alan Pearson exhibition
David Clegg exhibition
Grant Corbishley exhibition
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.
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.
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- )
