William Sutton - Dry September
William Sutton - Dry September
William Sutton on the landscape of Canterbury, taken from an interview with Damian Skinner as part of the Visual Culture in New Zealand Oral History Archive, 15 April 1999.
Reproduced with kind permission of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Related reading: In the Vast Emptiness
Collection
Bill Sutton Dry September
Bill Sutton began his long affiliation with the upper Waimakariri River area in his teenage years during the Great Depression, he and his elder brother Len spending several Christmases at Bealey with an aunt and uncle who had taken work there as a roadman. He later described the place getting under his skin as he and Len explored the area’s windblown tussocky hills and dry riverbeds. Soon after, in 1936, a single-lane bridge was opened on State Highway 73 across Bruce Creek, a flood-prone tributary previously crossable only by ford. Sutton returned to the region after two years’ art study and travel in London and Europe in 1947–9, bringing memory along with fresh eyes for a familiar landscape.
(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)
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Canterbury Landscape by Colin McCahon
In 2014 we purchased an important landscape work by Colin McCahon. Curator Peter Vangioni speaks about this new addition to Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection.
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Mountains, Cass by Rita Angus
This article first appeared as 'The wonders of waterolours' in The Press on 11 August 2015.
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100 years of the Cass field station
Last weekend the University of Canterbury Biology Department celebrated the 100th anniversary of the field station at Cass with a symposium on Cass followed up with a field trip to the station.
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Wainui - to the west of the long harbour
"I like Wainui, quaint, charming, rather like a Pieter Bruegel subject with the haymaking in progress." Rita Angus to Douglas Lilburn, 1943
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CASS
This week 77 years ago Rita Angus visited Cass on a sketching holiday with Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell that resulted in several paintings including the Christchurch Art Gallery's Cass.
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CASS
André Hemer's exhibition CASS is well worth a visit if you are near the Christchurch Art Gallery's space above NG on Madras street.
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Another nor’wester descends on Canterbury
Some people fear them, others revel in the unforgiving dry heat – love them or hate them the legendary Canterbury nor'wester is one of the defining features of this region in the summer months and there is a real doozy blowing outside at the moment.
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Heart in the high country: Austen Deans (1915 - 2011)
For Austen Deans, OBE, painting was an expression of his love of the outdoors and, in particular, the Canterbury high country.
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Sutton high-fives McCahon
Nothing made it into a W.A. Sutton painting by accident, and the white line that rises diagonally through the sky in Plantation Series II is no exception.
Article
Exquisite Treasure Revealed
Canterbury Museum holds two albums compiled by Diamond Harbour artist Margaret Stoddart. The older of the two, containing images featured in this Bulletin, and itself currently exhibited in the Gallery, covers the period 1886–96. The album is handsomely bound in maroon, and stamped M.O.S. in gold. It contains a sort of travelogue by way of black and white photographs set amongst decorative painting, mostly of native flora, with some locality and date information.