Shane Cotton Untitled (head 5), Untitled (head 4) and Hiruhārama 2009–12. Acrylic, photo etching and aquatint on paper. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2013
Shane Cotton Hiruhārama 2009–12. Acrylic, photo etching and aquatint on paper. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2013
This exhibition is now closed
Christchurch audiences at last have the opportunity to experience the complexity and ambition of Cotton's latest work in this two-venue exhibition by one of the biggest names in New Zealand art.
For two decades Shane Cotton (ONZM, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) has been one of New Zealand's most acclaimed painters of landscape and memory. Trained at the University of Canterbury's School of Fine Arts, his works of the 1990s played a pivotal part in that decade's debates about place, belonging and bicultural identity.
In the mid 2000s, however, Cotton painted the first in what would become a major series of vast, nocturnal skyscapes. Over the last half-decade, Cotton's works have become increasingly complex and provocative, incorporating ragged skywriting and a host of charged images.
These skyscapes inspired Christchurch Art Gallery's celebrated Australasian touring exhibition Shane Cotton: The Hanging Sky, and now Christchurch audiences are able to experience a selection in Baseland. This two-venue exhibition combines major recent paintings with new works made especially for the show – including a vast new mural-scale painting, a spectacular suite of 'target' prints, and painted baseball bats that suggest both trophies and weapons. Baseland showcases Cotton's faith in painting as a space of possibility and provocation – a place of leaps, freefalls and charged collisions between images.
Baseland is at Christchurch Art Gallery's venue at 209 Tuam Street and Ilam Campus Gallery at the School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, and is accompanied by a major book with contributions by Justin Paton, Eliot Weinberger, Robert Leonard and Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow.
Free guided tours at 2pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 209 Tuam Street. No bookings required.
Part of this exhibition was also on display at the Ilam Campus Gallery from 7 June to 27 July 2014.
-
Date:
7 June – 17 August 2014 -
Exhibition number:
970 -
Presented with
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: Outer Spaces
Exhibition
Your Hotel Brain
13 May 2017 – 3 May 2018
Energies and anxieties from the threshold of the new millennium.
Exhibition
Shane Cotton: The Hanging Sky
City Gallery Wellington from 15 June until 6 October
Touring Australia and New Zealand 2012–13
Interview
Shane Cotton
Back on 20 September 2011, when our public programmes team began setting up the Hagley Park Geo Dome for a talk with Shane Cotton, they put out about sixty chairs and would have been glad to fill them. After all, it was a cold night in Christchurch, the roads were rough, the Geo Dome was off the beaten track and the quake had long since broken the rhythm of the Gallery's old Wednesday night programme of public talks.
Notes
Your Hotel Brain
This week we've been installing a new collection exhibition, Your Hotel Brain. It replaces curator Ken Hall's elegant meditation on architecture and memory, Above Ground, in the contemporary collection galleries.
Notes
Cotton On
Shane Cotton: Baseland opens at 209 Tuam Street and the Ilam Campus Gallery this Saturday
Notes
Hanging Around
Curated by Justin Paton, and in development since 2009, Shane Cotton: The Hanging Sky was scheduled to open at Christchurch Art Gallery in late 2011. However, earthquakes and the subsequent closure of the Gallery intervened, and the show was reconfigured as a very successful touring exhibition, visiting venues in Brisbane, Sydney and Wellington. So it will be a pleasure to finally open a version of the exhibition in Christchurch with Baseland in June this year. Bulletin caught up with Shane to ask a few questions about what has been a rather unusual journey.
Notes
Radio Cotton
Have a listen to Graham Beattie of Beattie's Book Blog talking about our Shane Cotton book on Radio Live last Sunday.
Notes
The Hanging Sky in Wellington
Having been lucky enough to attend the intimate opening of our exhibition Shane Cotton: The Hanging Sky at the IMA in Brisbane in December it was great to be part of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū whanau again last Friday evening in Wellington.
Notes
Talk to the bat
The US President Theodore Roosevelt famously said that politicians on the world stage should 'speak softly and carry a big stick'. And on the evidence of this photo, you might think that Sean Duxfield, whose arm this is, has decided to follow Teddy's advice in committing his duties as Exhibitions and Collections team leader. 'Problem? Talk to the bat.'
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.