Attention Grabber

"One for the Mother - Allsorts" - 2010

Wayne Youle (Ngapuhi, Ngati Whakaeke) is an artist known for his bright, slick, 'pop-art style', an artist who never shies away from playfully challenging bicultural stereotypes. This is his latest work, covering the usually grey car park bunker outside Christchurch Art Gallery - a vibrant splash of colour that is part of the gallery's excellent OUTER SPACES programme that promotes art works outside the main gallery building. It's as if some giant licorice allsort has fallen from the sky and tumbled onto a green patch right in front of the gallery. Lovely!
www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

More From Waitangi Day

More shots from yesterday's Waitangi Day celebrations at Christchurch Art Gallery.

Hangi meals wrapped in newspaper made for a popular lunch. I liked the presentation - a kind of 'ethnic take' on traditional New Zealand fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.

Red Poi

Red Umbrellas

On a Very Hot Afternoon.

February 6, 2010

Poi Pupil

I spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for what I consider to be an interesting photograph.

Sometimes - often - I find that photograph in the detail of things rather than in 'the main event.'
That was certainly the case here - last year on Waitangi Day, at a kapa haka performance at Christchurch Art Gallery. I did in fact, get some terrific shots of the group performing but I loved these shots of the little girl best of all. Like so many Maori cultural groups, they encourage the young ones from a very early age and the adult performers never seem put off or distracted by the inattentions of the young. I loved the way she just kept doing her own thing, fiddling with one of the women's piupiu (skirts).

The Back Cupboards

New Zealand photographer, filmmaker, artist and designer, Neil Pardington (Ngai Tahu, Ngati Mamoe, Ngati Waewae & Scottish descent), opens his amazing show The Vault at Christchurch Art Gallery tonight. I’ve been looking forward to this exhibition for months for it brings together all the things I love – museums and especially museum storerooms, photography, taxidermy, artefacts, collections, the notion of memory and stored histories – they’re all there in beautiful, brilliant images that resonate with a million of my own stored memories. I collected everything as a child and my father made me little glass-fronted cases for storing my birds’ egg collection, my butterflies, my pressed leaves and flowers, my seed and nut collection, my stone and gemstone collections. How I never ended up working in a museum I’ll never know – but it’s no surprise to me that one of my sons does. (He’s at Auckland Museum).

That aside, Neil Pardington’s ‘Vault is another matter entirely – a brilliant ‘expose’ of the behind-the-scenes artefacts and collections in storage. He got the idea for the photographic series while he was working behind the scenes at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and it has been a work in progress ever since, as he has explored the vaults, archives and basements of museums, art galleries, archives, banks, libraries and hospitals – “my focus is on places we store those things that are precious to us and conversely, those very similar spaces we store the obsolete and unwanted,” he has said of his work.
In the Christchurch exhibition, Pardington presents 40 photographs (taken on large-format camera) that ‘expose storehouses of memory and places filled with mystifying treasure.’ They include my favourites, the stuffed animals and birds…all with cute little cardboard labels attached to their legs; paintings attached to sliding storage walls; specimens in jars; rooms filled with mannequins; shelves filled with rolls of film in tins; Maori artefacts; buildings filled with army vehicles; textiles, card catalogues and much more. It’s a scrumptiously voyeuristic peek into the normally unseen, off-limits world of the nation’s treasures and it will be on show at Christchurch Art Gallery until March 14, 2010. www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz www.neilpardington.com
Images supplied by Christchurch Art Gallery are, from top to bottom:
Neil Pardington Taonga Maori Store #4, Nelson Regional Museum 2007. Lambda/C-print, dimensions variable. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.
Neil Pardington Taonga Maori #2, Whanganui Regional Museum 2006. LED/C-print. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.
Neil Pardington Land Vertebrates Store #1, Auckland Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira 2008. LED/C-print. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

A Small Graphic Moment

A Small Paper Cut-Out Whare

From I SEE RED

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Christchurch Art Gallery 2008

The Big Picture

"Pulse" Darryn George, 2008. Ajr
The classic white cube of the Sutton Gallery at Christchurch Art Gallery was transformed last year when Christchurch-based contemporary Maori artist, Darryn George installed his mammoth, attention-grabbing work PULSE. I leaned against the entrance when I first visited - transfixed - and I listened to passers-by. Their first reaction was invariably astonishment. A team of painters had spent two and a half weeks transferring George’s elaborate design - inspired by the colours and patterns of Maori art and the architectural detail of traditional Maori meeting houses - onto the four walls of the gallery - approximately 300sqm floor-to-ceiling. The large rear wall was in fact a giant ‘wordscape’ created from the Maori word waru, which means eight – George’s reference to “a spiritual time and space beyond the seven days of the week.” The once-simple Sutton Gallery was tansformed into a powerful, almost reverential space. I always felt it a shame the gallery couldn't have stayed that way. www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

Te Huringa / Turning Points

All Images Courtesy of the Fletcher Trust Collection. Captions below.

If you’re in Christchurch before February 15th make sure you get to Christchurch Art Gallery to see the very beautiful exhibition “Te Huringa / Turning Points,” Pakeha Colonisation and Maori Empowerment – an exhibition of paintings from the collections of The Fletcher Trust and Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui. It’s a big show that includes works by some of New Zealand’s best known artists – both Maori and Pakeha - and the diversity of style and medium represented in “the journey from early European contact, settlement and colonisation through to contemporary perspectives by 20th and 21st century artists” makes for rivetting viewing. There’s something very serene about the whole space. Adding to the multi-layered perspectives is the fact that the show took a bicultural curatorial approach. Dr Jo Diamond is of Ngapuhi Maori descent and is currently lecturer in Maori Art History at the University of Canterbury; and Peter Shaw has been curator of The Fletcher Trust Collection since 1991. Their combined approach to the exhibition catalogue presents a gentle ‘unravelling’ of the spiritual aspects of many of the works by Diamond set against Shaw’s gathering of biographical and historical facts. It’s a nice touch and one I’m sure viewers will appreciate. If you miss the show in Christchurch, it opens at Dunedin Public Art Gallery on March 13 and runs through to July.

Works shown above are all Courtesy of the Fletcher Trust Collection and are: Top: Major-General Sir Horatio Gordon Robley, Tomika Te Mutu, 1866, Watercolour; Centre: John Tole, Maori Village, Rotorua, C.1950, Oil on Board; Bottom: Thomas Allom, Mt Egmont from the North Shore of Cook Straight, New Zealand, natives burning off wood for Potato Grounds, 1841, Watercolour.
www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz www.sarjeant.org.nz www.fletchercollection.co.nz www.dunedin.art.museum

Gallery Pounamu

Pounamu. Christchurch Art Gallery. Feb 2009 Ajr

If you go into Christchurch Art Gallery any time, you’ll notice a massive lump of pounamu (jade) at the rear of the ground floor. According to the plaque beside it, these are its origins: “It is from the takiwa (territory) of Ngati Waewae on the West Coast of Te Waipounamu (South Island) and was found in the Turiwhati (Griffin Range) area by Pierre Tumahai and Wereta Tainui Jnr. The pounamu was a koha (gift) to the gallery from Te Runanga (council) o Ngati Waewae and Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu to Christchurch Art Gallery at the gallery’s opening on May 10, 2003. Te Puna o Waiwhetu and Ngati Waewae is one of the Maori councils that has kaitiakitanga (guardianship) responsibilities for pounamu. As the gallery’s mauri stone, the principles of kaitiakitanga (guardianship), tino rangatiratanga (domain), manaakitanga (respect) and whakawhanaungatanga (kinship) as applied by Te Runanga o Ngati Waewae and Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu are encapsulated within the spirit of this pounamu.” www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz

Bouncy Marae

"Bouncy Marae" by Inez Crawford, Christchurch Art Gallery, 2008. Ajr

I love it when contemporary art moves away from the traditional confines of an art gallery and ‘merges’ with everyday life. It goes a long way to breaking down barriers, to making serious art much more accessible to people who would not otherwise bother. This work – “Bouncy Marae,” by Inez Crawford – shown at the Christchurch Art Gallery in 2008 - is a classic example. I sat on the stairs there when it was showing and watched a whole bunch of kids tearing off their shoes so they could leap about inside the ‘sculpture.’ That was the aim of things – to let kids get inside and have fun. It’ was made of PVC and is filled with air, creating an inflatible trampoline like ‘environment.’ Crawford was inspired by her childhood impression that her local marae was a fairytale castle. This ‘bouncy wharenui is chocolate brown on the outside and hot pink on the inside. And didn’t I time it well….just in time to catch a young girl in a hot pink outfit playing inside. www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

In Training

Waitangi Day, Mareikura Kapa Haka, Christchurch Feb 2009 Ajr

These are just some of the dozens of photographs I took of the Mareikura kapa haka performance at yesterday’s Waitangi Day celebrations at Christchurch Art Gallery. I loved the fact that they included some very small children – and this little girl almost stole the show with her confidence. It’s good to know that the youngest generation are being taught about their culture at an early age. She may not have been the best at twirling the poi (soft balls on string) but she gave it her best shot and what she lacked in skill she more than made up for with enthusiasm. There are more shots below in my Waitangi Day post.

Waitangi Day Celebrations

Mareikura Performance, Christchurch Art Gallery. Waitangi Day 2009. Ajr

Today – February 6th, 2009 – marks the 169th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between Maori and Pakeha (New Zealanders of European ancestry) in 1840. The Treaty was signed in a tent in the grounds of what is now known as the Treaty house at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland. It made New Zealand part of the British Empire, guaranteed Maori rights to their land and the rights to be British citizens. The signing was not commemorated annually until 1947 and it wasn’t until 1973 that the day was officially marked into law as a public holiday – then called New Zealand Day. It was officially re-named Waitangi Day in 1976. Since then this national day of commemoration has often been marked by controversy and protests by Maori activists over what many feel to be treaty injustices. Away from the discontent though, many New Zealanders – Maori and Pakeha alike – celebrate the day with public concerts, festivals and traditional Maori performances. They see it as a chance to celebrate people, partnership and unity. I spent the best part of today – a very HOT day – attending the Waitangi Day celebrations at Christchurch Art Gallery. We watched a terrific traditional kapa haka performace by the Mareikura group (above), which was followed by a reading by Maori poet, Ben Brown and a performance by contemporary Maori singer, Toni Huata. I sat beside an English couple who had only been in the country three days. They’d just watched a showing of Vincent Ward’s movie, “Children of the Rain,” they were tucking in to a hangi platter and they were “blown away” by the “singing and dancing” – all up a pretty good first immersion into Maori culture I told them.