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Rita Angus: Life & Vision
Starting Date: Saturday, 15 November 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 15 February 2009
Rita Angus is one of New Zealand’s most significant artists. A pioneer of modern painting in this country, she created some of our most memorable and best-loved artworks.
This major exhibition, featuring 140 works, reveals the themes of identity, spirituality and nature that were central to her vision, and show how her commitment to pacifism and her strong feminist beliefs profoundly influenced her work.
Developed and Presented by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Principal Funding Partner: Pelorus Trust
Major Sponsor: Singapore Airlines
For more information and access to free audio downloads relating to works in this exhibition, please click on the following link:
Rita Angus: Life & Vision
Rita AngusSelf-portrait 1936-37
Oil on canvas
Dunedin Public Art Gallery, purchased 1980.
Reproduced courtesy of the Rita Angus Estate.
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The Alumni: Peter Stichbury
Starting Date: Saturday, 29 November 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 22 February 2009
The Alumni: Peter Stichbury is the first major public gallery exhibition highlighting Stichbury's work to date. Drawing directly from the commercial imagery of advertising and celebrity, he delivers back exaggerated renditions which question our attachment to such images.
Peter Stichbury's paintings are alluring yet ultimately contrary. Glossy and highly polished of surface, beneath the immaculate facades of his portraits lurk a darker underbelly. Plastic surgery, skin disorders, eugenics and genetic engineering: the human body, his paintings suggest, occupies a kind of shifting and fluid terrain where all things are possible.
Exhibition project commissioned and toured by Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts
Peter Stichbury
Swoon (Stendhal Syndrome)
2000
Acrylic on linen
Private collection
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Colin McCahon
Starting Date: Saturday, 5 July 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 19 October 2008
Two decades after Colin McCahon’s death, this touring focus exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper by one of the most widely acclaimed New Zealand artists.
McCahon is considered one of the most influential modernists in the Australasian region, producing his most strikingly original works from the late 1940s to the early 1980s.
This exhibition features paintings and works on paper reflecting key concerns in McCahon’s art from 1950 through to the early 1980s.
It includes his giant masterpiece Victory Over Death 2 1970 as well as I Applied My Mind 1980-82, one of his last paintings.
Colin McCahon: National Gallery of Australia Focus Exhibition
Colin McCahon Victory Over Death 2 1970
Synthetic polymer paint on unstretched canvas
207.5 x 597.7cm
Gift of the New Zealand Government 1978
Courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust
Colin McCahon
Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950
oil on canvas
Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel
Bequest 2004
Courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust
Collection National Gallery of Australia
For more information, please click the following link:
http://nga.gov.au/McCahon/
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Small Talk
Starting Date: Saturday, 5 July 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 19 October 2008
The starting point for Small Talk is Colin McCahon's iconic painting I Am (1954).
It is hoped that the McCahon will operate both as a provocation for the other works in this exhibition and point of departure in terms of chatter that echoes throughout the gallery space.
The artists that are located in relation to I Am occupy a broad range of positions and their work tends to use richly layered text: from Ronnie van Hout's sardonic proclamations to John Reynolds verbose signage system and Peter Robinson's twisted sales jargon. This cacophony of voices will provide not only a point of reference in terms of the issues being discussed in contemporary art but also an important feeder back into McCahon's I Am.
Peter Robinson
Untitled 1994
wood, oil, light bulb, tin, wool, synthetic polymer paint.
Collection Dunedin Public Art Gallery
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Julian Hooper: The Future's Counsel
Starting Date: Saturday, 1 March 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 1 June 2008
In mid 2006 Julian Hooper visited the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Otago Settlers Museum on a fact-finding mission that sought to scope out and interrogate the historical portraits in these two collections. The Future’s Counsel brings together a new series of mesmerising portraits that splice and merge a rich assortment of motifs from European and Pacific history, delving especially into the artist’s Tongan and Hungarian cultural lineage. Hooper has developed a distinct body of work that both meditates on this form of representation and mediates his social, cultural and art historical concerns.
A Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition.
Julian Hooper
Dame 2008
Acrylic on board
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Journeywork: The Sculpture of Peter Nicholls
Starting Date: Saturday, 15 March 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 15 June 2008
Traversing thirty-five years in Nicholls’ life, this exhibition presents nine major works along with smaller sculptures and drawings. Exploring many different paths the artist likens to ‘tributaries of a river,’ his work traces the relationship and essential energy exchange between people and the land. Nicholls’ work has always evoked universal as well as personal journeys. Not only has his sculpture embodied the artist’s ongoing process of investigation and discovery but also the flow of rivers, the making of roads and the journeys people make towards ecological balance and cultural tolerance.
A Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition. Curated by Jodie Dalgleish.
Peter Nicholls
Tomo 2005
Steam-bent pine and galvanised steel in two loops,one 48 metres in length the other 43 metres
Photographs by Gil Hanly and Justin Summerton
Connells Bay Centre for Sculpture, Waiheke Island.
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Spencer Finch: First View
Starting Date: Saturday, 19 April 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 22 June 2008
Spencer Finch, the Gallery's first international visiting artist for 2008, brings together a series of artworks that test, contemplate and record his response to being located in an unfamiliar physical and cultural environment.
By focusing on the most rudimentary aspects of experience, such as sunlight, weather patterns and dust particles, Finch not only reveals how our environment is in a constant state of flux he also compels us to think about the complex relationship between looking, its mediation and our memory of that moment or event.
A visiting artists project supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.
Spencer Finch
CIE 529/418 (candlelight)
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Zeitgeist Becomes Form: German Fashion Photography 1945–1995
Starting Date: Saturday, 26 April 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 27 July 2008
This exhibition features more than 100 images celebrating 50 years of iconic world fashion, from Christian Dior in the 1940s to Issey Miyake in the 1990s. Zeitgeist Becomes Form includes unforgettable images by some of Germany’s most renowned photographers including Helmut Newton, Sybille Bergmann, Rico Puhlmann and Thomas Rusch.
These images provide a fascinating insight into both the evolution of fashion, and simultaneous changes in society, codes of morality, the role of women and the hopes and ideals of people at the time.
Developed by ifa. Toured by the Goethe Institut
Jurgen Teller
Kristen McMenamy for i-D London 1994
Cibachrome (detail)
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Hail Falls Noisily on Bamboo Leaves*: Japanese Prints from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Collection
Ongoing Exhibition
Heavy snow, monsoon winds and rain, and other elemental factors contribute to diverse seasonal changes in weather and climate in Japan.
Landscape, including the depiction of season and weather patterns, became a popular theme of colour woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) in the latter stages (18th and 19th Centuries) of the Edo period in Japan. There are some exquisite examples in this exhibition from the Art Gallery's own collection as well as from the F.C.W. Staub loan collection, including prints by such masters as Hiroshige and Hokusai.
*extract from the Diary of Izumi Shikibu (10th - 11th Century) translated by Willis Barnstone.
Ando Hiroshige 1797-1858
Tsuchiyama Haru No Ame
(Spring Rain)
woodblock print on paper.
Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Purchased 1985 with
funds from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society.
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The Colour of Everyday: The European Watercolours of Frances Hodgkins
Starting Date: Monday, 28 April 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 8 March 2009
The Colour of Every Day celebrates the fact that Frances Hodgkins was, at heart, a watercolourist dedicated to ‘freshness & lovely colour’.
The exhibition traces her development from touring artist chronicling glimpses of Europe in 1902 to sought after Parisian watercolourist and teacher painting women and children in a highly individual impressionistic style in 1912. It also traces the intense highs and lows of ten years that cemented her success.
The Colour of Everyday includes the gallery's recently acquired Hodgkins' work Old Woman Caudebec.
Frances Hodgkins
Summer c. 1912
Watercolour. Collection Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
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Rokahurihia Ngarimu-Cameron: Tōku Haerenga
Starting Date: Saturday, 14 June 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 27 July 2008
Roka Cameron explores the potential of loom weaving in a traditional Maori context to honour the sovereignty of the phormium tenax (New Zealand Flax) - te whitau o te harakeke. She writes: "Its unique texture fuelled my desire to experiment and to push the possibilities of the fibre even further. I refer to this fibre as the thread of life:
‘ Te aho ora ‘.
Not only has Te aho ora clothed our people for generations but it has been instrumental through its form in maintaining the adaptability and preservation of our art and our people."
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Mary McFarlane: Hikoi
Starting Date: Saturday, 28 June 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 12 October 2008
For this installation Mary McFarlane has gathered up a vast array of walking sticks that act as talismans to a range of social, political, physical and emotional history. Hikoi is a potent title for this exhibition not simply because of its associations with recent events in Maori history, but also as it is about going or being taken on a spiritual journey.
Mary McFarlane
Hikoi Installation detail.
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Russell Moses: Garden of Light
Starting Date: Saturday, 23 August 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 16 November 2008
Local artist Russell Moses creates wallworks that shimmer and shift, fade and glow; like the passing of day to night, and season to season. Sometimes made with landscape gardener's materials, and marked with patterns found in the earth, across cut stone or on water, twenty works create a garden of light that evokes Moses' visceral and soul-felt response to places nearby.
Russell Moses
Green Cross 2007.
Acrylic on Steel.
Private Collection.
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Jim Cooper: Peppermints and Incense
Starting Date: Saturday, 4 October 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 1 February 2009
Following on from his smash-hit ceramic interpretation of the Beatles' album cover Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Jim Cooper will create a completely new cast of glazed-clay characters for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. This promises to be a spellbinding installation as Cooper delves into the music, culture and imagery of seventies rock legends such as Cream and The Rolling Stones.
Jim Cooper
Peppermints and Incense (Installation detail) 2008
Ceramic and mixed media.
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Inez Crawford: Bouncy Marae
Starting Date: Thursday, 4 September 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 2 November 2008
Inez Crawford's Bouncy Marae is a sharp-witted twist on the ubiquitous 'Bouncy Castle' so beloved by small children at gala days and birthday parties. Built commercially and as robust and user-friendly as the real thing, Crawford's version is a Wharenui as seen through the eyes of a Disney studio: chocolate on the outside, jelly-pink inside.
Inez Crawford Bouncy Marae
PVC, air, compressor.
Installed at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Manukau, 2008
Photograph by John Collie
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Michele Beevors: Debbie Does Disney
Starting Date: Saturday, 22 November 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 25 January 2009
Having worked on this motley crew of Disney characters for the last six years, Beevors has put together a very dark spin on fantasia.
This supersized cast, which so easily could have been lifted from a Disneyland set, discloses a seamier side to the wholesome values that are usually espoused in the fairytales.
This is spectacle with a candy coated surface, but behind this spray-on nostalgia there is a much more revealing acerbic centre.
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Joyce Campbell: Ice falls
Starting Date: Saturday, 20 December 2008
Finishing Date: Sunday, 15 March 2009
Joyce Campbell has produced a stunning response to the Big Wall by blowing up and splicing together eleven separate shots of glacial faces.
Part of the “Last Light Antarctica” series Ice falls seeks to reveal the burgeoning horror that the effects of climate change are having on the earth’s polar icecaps and invites viewers to experience Antarctica in a volatile and precarious state.
This is an Antarctica of the gothic imagination: a primordial, untameable and largely untouched domain.
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