Gallery exhibitions ship-shape
Three new exhibitions display how the Christchurch Art Gallery continues to impress in showcasing works from its existing collection, writes Warren Feeney.
Since the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu reopened in December 2015, gallery staff have given its permanent collection a level of attention in group exhibitions that is almost without precedent in the public gallery’s history since the 1970s.
From December 2015’s line-up of opening exhibitions, the thematic cut-and-paste mashup of Beasts and Above Ground, revealed a confirmed and consistent shift in approaches to exhibitions developed predominantly from artworks in the gallery’s permanent collection.
There are various reasons as to why this has may have happened. A case of absence makes the heart grow fonder with the gallery closed for almost five years; the acquisition and gifting of new works for the collection over that period, cultivating a genuine excitement about bringing the collection to the public’s attention; and also an upping of its game by gallery staff, as a new generation of curators emerged in the country’s public and dealer galleries, with an attitude about repositioning the work of New Zealand artists in fresh and previously unimagined ways.
Almost a year on from its reopening and a new series of exhibitions, the CAG continues to impress, reconsidering the potential of its collection and encouraging gallery visitors to look at it anew. Look no further than the recently opened exhibitions, Kowhaiwahi, Ship Songs and Reading the Swell. All possess distinct and well-defined themes, yet walking from one gallery space into the next, the works in these shows seem to be passing messages and like-minded images to one another from room to room.
Curated by Nathan Pohio, Kowhaiwhai is not an exhibition simply driven by an idea seeking to complicate its intentions. Pohio has selected five works by five artists working from Maori architectural traditions of the wharenui and the painted Kowhaiwhai rafter designs in these communal spaces. Kowhaiwhai patterns in black, red and white are a reference point in this exhibition for three generations of artists, from Gordon Walters and Buck Nin in the 1970s, to Shane Cotton, Darryn George and Michael Parekowhai in the 2000s.
In Kowhaiwhai, an economy of colour and form appears essential to the singularity of each artist’s response. In Buck Nin’s The Mamakus, (1975), the presence of Papatuanuku (earth mother), erupting from the darkness of the landscape, represents, not just the moment of creation, but also the artist’s spirited dedication to works that encouraged a new generation of Maori artists, rising in response to Nin’s milestone painting.
Parekowhai’s The Bosom of Abraham, from 2002, courtesy of the Canterbury Museum, also takes on a new life in Kowhaiwhai. This series of light boxes with glowing ‘‘lounge-lizard’’ Kowhaiwhai patterns has never looked better. More frequently positioning itself between Pop-Art irony and commercial domesticware, surrounded by the good company of the work of the other participating artists, The Bosom of Abraham assumes a dignity that, until now, may have been lying dormant.
The Bosom of Abraham is located at the entry point to Ship Songs, which is also curated by Pohio. Ship Songs opens with Mark Adams’ photographs of rock sites from the south side of the Waitaki River within the takiwai (district) of Te Rununga o Moeraki. His choice of these sites as locations for shelter or places for sharing knowledge and communal gatherings clearly resonates with Kowhaiwhai’s connections to the communal interior of the wharenui.
Not surprisingly, Ship Songs has an abundance of images of ships. Adams’ photographs include summary outlines and cave drawings of ships. Fiona Pardington’s photograph The Charlotte Jane, references the four ships that travelled from Great Britain to Canterbury in 1850, and her work is augmented by watercolours completed on this voyage by founding settlers, James Edward Fitzgerald and Alfred Charles Barker.
Yet, Ship Songs widens its field of vision, encouraging the gallery visitor not be limited by thinking that this exhibition is centred simply upon the idea of ‘‘journeys and arrivals’’. Rather, it asks the viewer to ‘‘feel something familiar and human running through the works’’. And this is a reasonable request to be making. There is an element of personal experience, as well as the universal nature of our experiences of life in all the works in Ship Songs; Pardington’s The Charlotte Jane is a glass-blown model of the ship made by John Rowe, a descendent of a Charlotte Jane passenger. Fitzgerald’s watercolour records the comforts of his sea cabin on his voyage through the Pacific and Adams’ record of the presence of ancestors in the Te Ru¯ nunga o Moeraki cave shelters, are all about ‘‘something familiar and human’’.
And for those who may be seeking a more discernibly maritime subject, Ship Songs also provides an introduction to Reading the Swell. Although nautical and ocean-bound in its subjects, Reading the Swell is an eclectic mix of artworks, all worthy of attention, if for no other reason than to discover the frenetically wired record cover design of Dave Mitchell’s Dead Dog in Port Chalmers (1992). Like the majority of works in Reading the Swell, Mitchell’s contribution is in well-selected company, placed alongside scrimshaws of 19th century sailing ships.
Reading the Swell has its share of matchmaking partnerships. Anne Noble’s Wilhelmina Bay, Antarctica (2006), a photograph of a shoreline of white, plastic tables and chairs for viewing the expansive Antarctic landscape, becomes the ideal foil to Petrus van der Velden’s The Leuvehaven, Rotterdam (1867). Noble’s ability to genuinely warm to the idea of van der Velden’s subject of an industrious seaport is only exceeded by her ability to undermine The Leuvehaven, Rotterdam‘s confidence in its faith in the grand ambitions of 19th century maritime trading and discovery. But the robust certainty of van der Velden’s painting also tempers the obvious irony of Noble’s scepticism.
And one further pleasure of Reading the Swell is that there are works that have been out of public view for far too long. Julius Olsson’s Moonlight (1910) ,isan anxious and expansive view of the Atlantic Ocean. A painting that confirms that the perfect moment for a reconsideration of the seriousness of Royal Academy seascape painting from the 19th century has finally arrived. ❚ Ko¯ whaiwahi, Ship Songs and Reading the Swell. Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Montreal Street, until February 5.