B.191
ISBN: 1176-0540
Magazine
In this issue, Roger Collins looks at the Pacific etchings of eighteenth-century French artist Charles Meryon, who sailed around New Zealand on the Rhin, visiting the French settlement of Akaroa in 1843. And Lara Strongman talks to prominent British artist John Stezaker, who is known for his distinctive, often deceptively simple, collages. Resolutely analogue in a digital era, he works with scalpel and glue, slicing images and joining them together in new configurations. We also hear from Gwynneth Porter and Ani O’Neill, who talk about the collaborative nature of work. Pagework comes from Holly Best, who recently featured in our Devil’s Blind Spot exhibition; My Favourite is by Victor Rodger, who finds familiarity and past adventures in another work from that same exhibition, our recent purchase Seta by Ane Tonga. Our Postcard comes from former Gallery guide, Margaux Warne, who revels in some of Paris’s smaller museums and galleries.
In this issue also, art historian and curator, Priscilla Pitts, considers trends in collecting for Christchurch’s public art collection during Jenny harper’s time here as the Gallery’s director; and Christina Barton, director of the Adam Art Gallery, writes of working with and knowing Jenny for a number of years.
Pages: 64
Imprint: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
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Gordon Walters Black on white (detail) 1965. PVA on hardboard. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, N. Barrett Bequest Collection, purchased 2014. Reproduced courtesy of the Gordon Walters Estate
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Collection
Martin Creed Work No. 2314
The artist uses a numbering system for his work. The words in this work read 'Everything is going to be alright.'
Collection
Gordon Walters Black on white
Gordon Walters is best-known for work that fused the influence of European modernist art and Māori and Pacific art forms, particularly the koru motif of painted kōwhaiwhai rafter designs. Walters’ influences from European modernism included the hard-edged geometric abstractions of Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin, seen while in Europe in 1950–51. Walters made his first optically charged ‘koru paintings’ in 1956, but didn’t show them until 1966 when he first exhibited this painting in Auckland.
Walters’ adaptation of the koru has been both admired and criticised by cultural commentators. Walters himself, when discussing the motif, increasingly focused on the fine mechanics of abstraction:
'What I’ve done to the form is push it more in the direction of geometry. So that I can have in my painting not only a positive/negative effect of black and white, but I can also have a working of vertical and horizontal, which is equally important.' (Op + Pop, 6 February – 19 June 2016)
Collection
Colin McCahon There is only one direction
This pared back, strikingly modern Madonna and child was painted in the Christchurch suburb of Phillipstown where Colin McCahon, perhaps New Zealand’s most acclaimed twentieth-century artist, lived with his family between 1948 and 1953. In contrast to the typically grander, often lavish treatment of this traditional subject within art history, McCahon’s composition is personal and startlingly bare, reduced to two naked figures framed within a rough oval that emphasises their close and enduring connection. Without haloes, thrones or attending angels, their identity is alluded to only through their grave sense of purpose and the work’s uncompromising title.
McCahon gave There is only one direction to the renowned writer James K. Baxter and his wife Jacqueline, marking the friendship between the two families and McCahon’s position as godfather to their young daughter Hilary. The painting sat above Baxter’s writing desk for many years.
(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)
Exhibition
Pickaxes and Shovels
5 August 2018
See the lives of the early settlers and Kāi Tahu tangata whenua in this selection of extraordinary works by frontier Pākehā artists.
Exhibition
John Stezaker: Lost World
22 July 2018
British artist John Stezaker is known for his distinctive, often deceptively simple, collages.
Exhibition
Yellow Moon: He Marama Kōwhai
28 October 2018
Yellow is a colour with impact – it’s time to encounter its brilliance.
Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword
Welcome to Christchurch Art Gallery’s first Bulletin of 2018, B.191.
In this issue, Roger Collins looks at the Pacific etchings of eighteenth-century French artist Charles Meryon, who sailed around New Zealand on the Rhin, visiting the French settlement of Akaroa in 1843. Meryon continued to create images of the South Pacific throughout his life as exemplars of a possible alternative to the ‘social hell of a great European city’.
Commentary
Zero Degrees of Separation
The New Zealand art world is an intimate place but my connection to Jenny Harper runs deeper than the usual bonds of a small community. Admitting this is a necessary disclaimer. I’m not an objective commentator; Jenny is family, literally. And professionally, I owe her plenty. What follows are some personal recollections about the Jenny I know through the associations we share, on the occasion of her imminent departure from the Christchurch Art Gallery, where she has been director since October 2006, making this the longest role in her distinguished career.
Commentary
Raising the Stakes
On the opening of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū Jenny Harper, then at Victoria University Wellington, wrote that the challenge for the newly opened Gallery was ‘to raise the stakes by acknowledging it is no longer the McDougall but is poised to become the force in the New Zealand art scene that Christchurch deserves.’ When, three years later, she became director of the Gallery, that’s exactly what she set out to achieve on several fronts. One of those was developing the collection.
Interview
Sometimes Going Back Is A Way Of Going Forward
John Stezaker is an English conceptual artist, acknowledged as a significant influence on the YBA generation. He has been working since the mid-1970s, while achieving international acclaim for his work in the past fifteen years. His exhibition Lost World opens at Christchurch Art Gallery in March 2018. He spoke to senior curator Lara Strongman on a visit to Aotearoa New Zealand in August 2017.
My Favourite
Ane Tonga's Seta
There’s a moment in my play Black Faggot when a gay Samoan man describes the moment he sees ‘this fine chocolate piece of mmmmmm’ on the dancefloor at a nightclub.
‘…he looked over at me and then he smiled and then I was like, Damn, he’s a Tongan. He had a mouthful of gold in there…’
Artist Profile
Charles Meryon: Etcher of Banks Peninsula
French explorers, natural historians, whalers and Catholic missionaries were increasingly present in the south-west Pacific from the mid-eighteenth century, but there was also a political thread in this activity. During the 1820s some in France saw New Zealand as a potential penal colony, and the project that saw a handful of French colonists settle on Banks Peninsula in 1840 made an official French presence in the region even more appropriate. This took the form of a French naval base, the ‘New Zealand station’, established at Akaroa in 1840.
Notes
Award wins!
We’re delighted to announce that Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū has won a number of accolades at the 21st Museums Australasia Multimedia & Publication Design Awards. The prestigious annual awards celebrate excellence in the Australasian museum sector and were presented on Tuesday evening during a gala dinner in Melbourne.