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Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection

6 August 2022 –
21 July 2024

Making room for fresh voices, untold narratives and disruptive ideas.

Art can tell stories about ourselves and the world around us. Conventional narratives allow only a narrow section of society to dominate our galleries – often male, Western and heterosexual. With a title that acknowledges the complexity of the task, Perilous considers the challenges and possibilities of making space for fresh voices, untold narratives and disruptive ideas. This expanded view of the collection combines many kinds of art-making and introduces exciting new acquisitions. Within it, artists draft relationships between our histories and future, creating new forms of seeing and communicating – and uncovering some unexpected, exhilarating ancestors along the way.

 

Curator:
Peter Vangioni
Melanie Oliver
Felicity Milburn
Ken Hall

Location:
Contemporary Collections Gallery

Exhibition number: 1131

+4

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Commentary
What Can Exhibitions Tell Us?

What Can Exhibitions Tell Us?

In a corner of Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, two self portraits are placed as if in conversation with one another. Made by Allie Eagle and Olivia Spencer Bower in 1974 and 1950 respectively, the pairing creates a striking vignette, and hints at some of the important themes that drive this exhibition.

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Commentary
Whenua is a Portal

Whenua is a Portal

Manawa mai tēnei i Ahuone mai
Manawa mai tēnei i whenuatia
Manawa mai tēnei he kapunga oneone
Tēnei te mauri
o Papatūānuku,
o Tūparimaunga,
o Parawhenuamea,
o Ukurangi
E whakaata mai nei e
Kōkiri!

Continued

Interview
Joyful Glitch

Joyful Glitch

Melanie Oliver: I first saw your work in 2016 as part of a one-night-only exhibition, NOWNOW held at 17 Tory Street in Wellington. It was a sculptural installation with fluids dribbling from a hanging form and I was at once delighted and disgusted. It was visceral and bodily, the drips a reminder of saliva, snot, discharge or cum, but also beautiful and joyful. It had vitality. While your more recent work is primarily video, it retains this abject, sculptural, gooey, oozing quality – it’s biological, or ecological. Why are you interested in grossing people out, in a pleasurable way?

Laura Duffy: I like to think I am interested in (my version of) bodily honesty, more than grossing people out, which could be read as the same thing, especially in earlier works...

Continued

Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword

Director's Foreword

Welcome to the summer 2022/23 issue of Bulletin. Since our last magazine was published I’ve been enjoying the view from my office window, which takes in a new installation that fills the high void above the Gallery’s reception desk. Tīkawe is the first work the Mata Aho Collective have created with harakeke, braiding 530 metres over several months. An exceptionally beautiful addition to our foyer, it’s lovely to watch the shadows Tīkawe casts move and morph as the spring sun tracks across the sky. My thanks to the W. A. Sutton Trust for funding this new commission and addition to the Gallery’s collection.

Continued

Commentary
Mediating Reality

Mediating Reality

In the late 1980s, a significant shift for photography in Aotearoa New Zealand was identified in two art publications. The essays and images in these books showed how artists were utilising new strategies, breaking away from the prevailing documentary photography tradition that was, and still is, widespread in Aotearoa. Six Women Photographers (1986) was edited by artists Merylyn Tweedie and Rhondda Bosworth for Photoforum; and Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in Recent New Zealand Photography (1989) was the catalogue for an exhibition curated by Gregory Burke for City Gallery Wellington. The artists included in both publications questioned in various ways the assumptions and rules of image making, manipulating the media and making a political move from the standpoint of taking a photograph, to making one. No longer was a photograph considered a truthful representation of reality. Instead, photography was seen as a product of, and a participant in, current social and cultural values.

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Interview
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Judy Darragh: Thanks, it’s great to have this new work included in Perilous, it was already in existence and fitted well with ideas in the show.

Life over lockdown became reduced – we were at home, everything was shut down and it became a surreal and shared experience for us all. While out walking I observed the flourishing of bird life, and I had time to hear and feed them in the back garden every day. Feeding the birds was very satisfying.

Continued

Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword

Director's Foreword

It’s been great to watch our visitors returning to the building over the past weeks despite the ongoing effects of Covid-19. This issue is coming to you regretfully late due to the pandemic; it’s one of a few changes to our published schedules as we find our feet again. I urge you to keep in touch via our website and social media for updates on what’s happening as we return to our full and vibrant programme of exhibitions and events.

Continued

Commentary
A Gathering Gravity

A Gathering Gravity

My encounters with Grant Lingard’s works have been few and fleeting. My information derives largely from the archive. The show has yet to open and I know only the title. But I am deep in speculation about what it will bring.

Continued

Commentary
Ka Mua Ka Muri

Ka Mua Ka Muri

Our histories are always with us, but who is telling the story? The Gallery’s new collection hang, Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection offers up a range of different perspectives on how the past and future might intersect, and invites us to rethink how we commonly see our heritage. Here, the exhibition’s curators have each selected a work from the exhibition for a closer look.

Continued

Edith Amituanai Tup$ hits the human flag 2016. Digital photograph mounted on dibond. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2022

Maungarongo Te Kawa Rangi Takere Hau 2022. Mixed media quilt. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2022

Shannon Te Ao Untitled (malady)(still) 2016. HD digital video file. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, gift of Sheelagh Thompson marking her 86th birthday and honouring director Jenny Harper's dedication to Christchurch Art Gallery during the five years of its closure after the 2010–11 Canterbury earthquakes

Sriwhana Spong The painter-tailor (still) 2019. 16mm film transferred to HD video and HD video shown as single-channel video, colour, sound, duration 32 min 10 sec. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2021

Angela Tiatia Heels (still) 2014. Single channel HD video 16:9, colour, sound 1 min 50 sec. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2021

Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, installation view, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022.

Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, installation view, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022.

Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, installation view, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022.