CREED

Creed, the complementary exhibition to Cream: European Paintings from the Collection, presents some of the most significant contemporary artworks in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s collection.

Sampling a range of styles from realism to expressionism, from modernist abstraction to assemblage, the exhibition also pays homage to several artists whose efforts and beliefs laid the foundation for modern art in New Zealand. Through their dedication to finding and pursuing their own visual languages, these artists have created an array of signs, symbols and gestures that continues to inspire younger artists.

Cream, which can be seen in the Gallery’s downstairs spaces, surveys the figurative painted world of the ‘old masters’. By contrast, Creed invites you to make a leap of faith into the often abstract and highly personal worlds of some of New Zealand’s modern masters. In these works they create, and in turn invite viewers to believe in, what the modern master Matisse called ‘a reality created by art.’