This exhibition is now closed

Out of Time

22 September 2023 –
28 April 2024

Andreas Cellarius Hypothesis Ptolemaica Sive Communis Planetarum Motus Per Eccentricos Et Epicyclos Demonstrans [The Ptolemaic Hypothesis or Common Representation Demonstrating the Planetary Motions through Eccentrics and Epicycles] 1661. Hand-coloured engraving. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, William A. Sutton bequest, 2000

Experience the storytelling power of art.

Take a meandering walk through this lively selection from the Gallery's historical collection, filled with surprises that offer opportunities for imaginative time travel. From classical antiquity through to colonial-era Aotearoa New Zealand, it also opens perspectives on the global movement of objects, people, and ideas. Along the way, we can picture the moment when Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific domain, starts to enter the public imagination at opposite ends of the world. From ancient stone carving through to a feast of painted and printed works, the works on display span over four thousand years and take in a range of media.

Curator:
Ken Hall

Location:
Burdon Family Gallery
Monica Richards Gallery

Exhibition number: 1137

Related

Commentary
Abandoned Ancestors

Abandoned Ancestors

Between 1971 and 1978, a selection of twelve early oil portraits came into the collection – a finely painted lineup of mostly British sitters, some named and some unidentified, whose arrival can be seen in a number of different ways.

Continued

Artist Profile
Flitting, Gliding, Strutting, Cavorting

Flitting, Gliding, Strutting, Cavorting

Ranking highly among the privately-owned works of art that have fallen across this curator’s path is an exquisite late-Georgian era album of Indian bird watercolours. This significant, previously unpublished folio contains twenty-five delicate watercolours and three small lithographs. Most paintings were produced collaboratively in 1826 by an interesting couple, Elizabeth (Eliza) Jane D’Oyly and her husband Charles Walter D’Oyly, the latter recognised in India as “perhaps the most famous of the amateur British artists who depicted the Indian scene.” A treasured gift from Elizabeth to her sister Isabella Gilbert in 1866, the album has stayed in the same family since then. It also carries sombre themes alongside its splendours.

Continued