christchurchartgallery.org.nz Open in urlscan Pro
159.89.220.126  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

/search

<form action="/search">
  <input type="search" placeholder="Search" name="q">
</form>

Text Content

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū


Exhibitions and Events Get Involved Collection Shop
Facebook Instagram Youtube
VisitEducationVenue HireAbout UsMy GalleryFilm and Audio



B.

Bulletin
New Zealand's leading 
gallery magazine

NotesCommentaryArtist ProfileArticleDirector's ForewordMy FavouriteInterview

Director's Foreword


Director's Foreword

Channelling


Commentary

Abandoned Ancestors


Commentary

Encountering Aotearoa: Whenua, Place and Practice


Commentary


EXHIBITION OPENING SOON


CORA-ALLAN: ENCOUNTERING AOTEAROA IS A MAJOR BODY OF NEW WORK THAT CONSIDERS THE
WHENUA FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF THE MOANA.

Open
tomorrow

10am – 9pm

WHAT’S ON







Night Market at the Gallery

Wine, beer, food, crafts, jewellery, ceramics, plants, candles, records, books,
DJs (not for purchase) and more...



Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa

A major exhibition featuring works that tell stories about personal and
collective histories, communication, distance and relationships to our
environment.



Don't miss

Our Out of Time exhibition is closing soon.

Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm

Free entry, free wifi



All Exhibitions and Events

Visitor Info

Subscribe to our Newsletter
NotesCommentaryArtist ProfileArticleDirector's ForewordMy FavouriteInterview


B.

Bulletin
New Zealand's leading 
gallery magazine


LATEST ISSUE

B.21501 MAR 2024

Director's Foreword


Director's Foreword

Channelling


Commentary

Abandoned Ancestors


Commentary

Encountering Aotearoa: Whenua, Place and Practice


Commentary

Buy from the Design Store View contents Download PDF About Bulletin Magazine

COMMENTARY

ENCOUNTERING AOTEAROA: WHENUA, PLACE AND PRACTICE

I stand staring at a painting of Motupōhue Bluff Hill. Being from the far south
myself, its shape is instantly recognisable, its silhouette painted in vibrant
colours that mirror the way light reflects on the real Motupōhue. The paint used
to create this familiar scene is made from whenua, and includes pukepoto, the
rich blue pigment that comes from the land near the hill: my whenua. There’s a
resonance between the work and its materials that makes it special, layered with
connections that reflect my own identity and experiences, reaffirming memories
and a sense of belonging.

Continued

MY FAVOURITE

TOSS WOOLLASTON: UNTITLED [QUENTIN (KIN) WOOLLASTON SHEARING]

“Teddy you fucking mongrel! Stay in your place, so help me you fuzzy prick!” my
four-year-old self shouted at my hapless toy bear during Christmas lunch in
1981.

Continued

COMMENTARY

ABANDONED ANCESTORS

Between 1971 and 1978, a selection of twelve early oil portraits came into the
collection – a finely painted lineup of mostly British sitters, some named and
some unidentified, whose arrival can be seen in a number of different ways.

Continued

COMMENTARY

CHANNELLING

In this issue of Bulletin we invited writer and curator Simon Gennard to respond
to the exhibition Spring Time is Heart-break. Simon delves into works by artists
Wendelien Bakker, Madison Kelly (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Pākehā) and Lucy Meyle,
which each examine complex entanglements across species and human/non-human
relationships. Looking to the dynamic thinking of writer Ursula Le Guin, Simon
offers another way of looking at these artistic practices, as a process of
making kin within our contemporary world.

Continued

COMMENTARY

SPRING TIME IS HEART-BREAK

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū’s new exhibition Spring Time is
Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa takes its title from one of six poems
written as memorials by Ursula Bethell after the death of her partner Effie
Pollen. The couple’s relationship mirrored the seasonal changes in the garden
they tended together during the decade that Bethell was writing poetry on Ngā
Kohatu Whakarakaraka o Tamatea Pōkai Whenua, the Port Hills overlooking Ōtautahi
Christchurch. For the poet, signs of spring became a bittersweet reminder of her
lost love. Reading Bethell’s work today, her evocation of intense feelings and
embeddedness with the land not only reflects the ethos of our present time, but
also resonates with many of the works in the exhibition. Bethell claims that we
are kin with the environment, foreshadowing ideas of human/non-human
interconnectedness and echoing tangata whenua understandings of whakapapa to the
whenua. Artist Aliyah Winter brought Bethell to our attention while she was
conducting research for a new work; our choice of title was made to encompass
seasons, temporality and emotion, as might be applied to contemporary practice
in Aotearoa.

Continued

COMMENTARY

SILVER SCREEN

Writing on the virtues of filmic possibility, Susan Sontag identifies that “the
distinctive cinematic unit is not the image, but the principle of connection
between the images: the relation of a ‘shot’ to the one that preceded and the
one that comes after.” It is this ability to manipulate the structure of film
that makes the medium special; editing, Sontag proposes, is the reason for film
to exist at all. The continuation or dissolution of one scene into the next
constitutes the materiality of the moving image; it is defined by the seams
where it also might be undone. As such, an artist’s choice to work with moving
image comes from an appreciation of its distinct characteristics.

Continued

COMMENTARY

CROSSTALK

“Orpheus hesitated beside the black river. With so much to look forward to he
looked back.”

I drive north through darkening skies. Dim headlights diffuse a blue pallor over
the sinking plains and pooling wetlands that glow in dusk. The car bends the
coast before turning inland to ascend the thicket of pine that cuts across the
dark island. Forest hedging the summit accedes to widening de- pressions in the
land. Its recesses withhold rubbled secrets of a past that appear and recede
without warning. I am driving into October.

Continued

COMMENTARY

CAPTURING THE AIRS

In the archive there is a stillness, an air of silence animated by the low hum
of electronics: servers buzzing, computer screens flickering, wires, old
analogue equipment. I load an audio file into a software program with a few
clicks of the mouse. Its waveform unfurls on my screen, a horizontal axis of
blue lines accentuated by vertical peaks and troughs, rendering the singing
breath and its energetic highs and lows. I press play and ambient sounds flood
the speakers. The magnetic tape hisses, jumps and crackles as it winds along,
the swell of laughter, singing voices, traffic passing by – inflections of a
bygone era. I’m transported to the memory of learning mā'ulu'ulu, a Tongan group
dance, as a young girl. After church on Sundays, in the middle of winter, we
would pack into the cold hall for rehearsal, kept warm by the movement of bodies
swaying together.

Continued

COMMENTARY

WATCH YOUR TONGUE

I te tīmatanga ko te hiahia Mai i te hiahia ko te mahara
Mai i te mahara ko te whakaaro Ka puta ko te kupu e.

In the beginning was the desire From the desire came the remembrance
From the remembrance came the conscious thought From the conscious thought came
the word.

Rangimotuhia Kātene

Continued

COMMENTARY

TE RĀ AT CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY

On 8 July 2023, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū opened Te Rā: The
Māori Sail to the public. The opening was a celebratory event to which manuhiri
travelled from around Aotearoa, excited by the opportunity to view the only
known customary Māori sail in existence. The development of the exhibition
required the knowledge and skills of numerous experts from the Gallery team and
elsewhere in Aotearoa, Australia and England. This photo-essay documents the
work that went into the installation, and some of the people that made it
happen.

Continued

Load more
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū

OPEN 7 DAYS 10am – 5pm, Wednesday 10am – 9pm

 

Cnr Worcester Boulevard and Montreal Street, PO Box 2626, Ōtautahi Christchurch
8140, Aotearoa New Zealand (+64-3-9417300
Email


     

Images are subject to copyright and, except as allowed by the Copyright Act
1994, may not be downloaded or otherwise used without express consent. See this
page for further information.