Mooch around galleries at home
If you’ve exhausted your options on Netflix or just looking for more highbrow entertainment than streaming services tend to offer, a bunch of Christchurch museums and art galleries are available for you to take a solitary mooch through their exhibitions.
The Christchurch Arts Centre has launched an online video series featuring the work of a dozen Kiwi artists available on the gallery’s website for six months.
Called Spheres: An Online Video Project, the programme, which launched on April 26, features Kiwi creations including Ronnie van Hout’s take on the 1980s film The Breakfast Club, Sione Monu’s exploration of issues around identity, and a work by Christchurch cinematographer John Chrisstoffels.
It’s the first time Christchurch Art Gallery has launched an online-only exhibition. Five of the works have been created specifically for this series.
Gallery director Blair Jackson said his team was finding innovative ways for people to engage with art, even when they were not able to physically step inside a gallery.
The new series also provided a venue for artists’ work and allowed them to connect with an audience, he said.
‘‘We don’t want people to feel cut off from the creative, imaginative world, because this is probably a time when people need it most.’’
Jackson said the name Spheres was a reference to the upsurge in use of the word ‘bubble’ during the lockdown. The gallery was ‘‘gearing up’’ to reopen under level 2, but how that would look would depend on what government restrictions would allow, he said.
Other online offerings include art activities for children and an invitation to the public to curate their own exhibitions online .
Before its closure, gallery librarian Tim Jones stuck poems in the building’s handbasins, offering an alternative to the call to sing Happy Birthday while hand washing, Jackson said. Jones suggested reading a poem instead, sparking the gallery’s resurgence of sharing poems across their social media during lockdown.
Jackson said the gallery was updating its permanent collection, something art enthusiasts could look forward to viewing once the space was complete.
The new space, Te Wheke: Pathways
Across Oceania would bring together a mix of traditional and contemporary art forms – including weaving, carving, painting, video, sculpture, photography – to explore themes of navigation, belonging and identity.
At the heart of the new exhibition is Christchurch’s public collection, along with loans of other collections from around New Zealand.
It is the first complete rehang of the gallery’s collection spaces since reopening after the earthquakes in 2015.
Canterbury Museum is also offering visitors a private look inside the museum during the level 3 lockdown, with their Breaking the Ice: The First Year in Antarctica exhibition available online, detailing an explorer’s first year in Antarctica.
Fiksate Gallery and Studio, a street art space on Gloucester St, launched its first collaborative print series last Friday, showcasing Kiwi artists work with a limited run of pieces to bring the art gallery-vibe home.
Director Nathan Ingram said each edition would be limited to 20 prints, with a new piece launched monthly. He hoped the series would act as collectors items.
Ingram said Fiksate, which houses an eclectic mix of in-house artists, writers, designers and printers, had opened for click and collect with most of the gallery’s collection available online, and he hoped shoppers would feel more inspired to support local work.
Arts and culture has been one of the worst-hit industries due to coronavirus, prompting the Arts Centre of Christchurch to ask the public to help it survive.
Yesterday, a Givealittle page had raised more than $7500 from 99 donors in six days, with bosses citing a major loss of revenue from ticketed and fundraising events, venue hire, tenant’s rent and shop income.
The page noted the centre, a charitable trust, was operating ‘‘hand to mouth’’ before coronavirus, and had ‘‘barely recovered’’ from the 2010 and 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.
The heritage central city complex has been the scene of a massive $255 million restoration project after suffering severe damage in the earthquakes.
Opened in 1877 as home to the University of Canterbury, the collection of category one heritage buildings is being rescued in what has become one of the success stories of the rebuild. The project is understood to be the largest of its type in the world.
The centre receives no ongoing council or government funding.