Andy Warhol - Mao Tse-tung
Andy Warhol - Mao Tse-tung
Gallery archivist Tim Jones describes how the screenprint Mao Tse-tung by Andy Warhol came into the colleciton.
Related reading: Op + Pop
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Andy Warhol Mao Tse-Tung
Op + Pop 6 February – 19 June 2016
Closely associated with notions of fame and popular culture, Andy Warhol was a leading name in American pop art, and renowned for using the aesthetics of advertising and commercial printing techniques in his work.
Warhol’s screenprint of Mao Tse-Tung was made when communist China’s founder was still alive. It adapted a portrait that was used throughout China in veneration of its leader and his ideas. The blue-faced Chairman Mao is one of a series of colour variations Warhol created, all equally startling. He made similar portraits of American icons including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse.
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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.
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Untitled 1956 by Gordon Walters
This article first appeared as 'Balancing act' in The Press on 17 August 2012.
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Glittering
When it comes to posting comprehensive pictures of your new exhibitions online, opinion is divided.
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Selected proofs
Peter Trevelyan's exhibition Selected Proofs is currently on at the University of Canterbury's SOFA Gallery until 7th September.
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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?
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New Zealand in the Biennale of Sydney and the Biennale of Sydney in New Zealand
and the Biennale of Sydney in New Zealand
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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.”
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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