The Golden Bearing

The Gallery exhibitions team have spent the last week undertaking the massive job of unpacking and installing Reuben Paterson’s The Golden Bearing, a very glittery sculpture that will be part of a new, family-focused exhibition Beyond the Hedge, which takes a journey through the collection by way of folk tales, faerie tales, myths and legends.
 
Taking the form of a tree, Paterson’s The Golden Bearing first took root in Ngāmotu New Plymouth’s botanical gardens, where he was inspired by the highly formal environments of public and private gardens. He also draws from his Māori family and cultural heritage, his father’s work as a landscape gardener and his own prior exploration of plants and artificial flowers in his work.
 
A bearing marks a position or direction on a map or can act as a landmark, and here, up on the first floor, The Golden Bearing’s canopy will reach out over the entrance and foyer and be visible through the windows from a wintry Octagon for the next few months.
 
Beyond the Hedge is one of a series of new exhibitions opening soon. There is also On the table: Artists in the Jim Barr and Mary Barr collection, a collaboration with artists et al., Nick Austin, Ruth Buchanan, Yona Lee and Marie Shannon; Christopher Ulutupu’s video installation The Fall, made while on residency here in Ōtepoti Dunedin; Ōhinehou Lyttelton-based painter Oliver Perkins’ A kind of arrow and its partner Big Wall work FREE-RANGE; and In, on, over, which was prompted by Perkins’ exhibition and looks at a group of works from the collection that explore different artistic methods and approaches to abstraction.
 
Noho ora mai, Simon Palenski
Ihupukutaka Kairauhī Curatorial Intern, Dunedin Public Art Gallery

[image: REUBEN PATERSON The Golden Bearing [b.1973 New Zealand Ngāti Rangitihi, Tūhoe] 2014.  Mixed media Courtesy of the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery. Photograph by Justin Spiers]