Come on let’s hear it for the Dowse
The legacy of former mayor Percy Dowse looms large over Lower Hutt, with the visionary civic works he initiated during his mayoralty from 1950 to 1970 still shaping our city today.
Among many other contributions, Percy Dowse and his wife Mary were driving forces (alongside the Hutt Art Society) in creating a public art gallery to inject more culture into a rapidly growing city.
Although neither Percy or Mary Dowse lived to see it, The Dowse Art Gallery was opened in 1971 and proudly bears their name. Renamed and redeveloped over the years, The Dowse Art Museum recently turned 50 and is rightly celebrated as an iconic arts institution in our city and region.
Right now, painted portraits of Percy and Mary Dowse hang on a pink wall with jewelled tiara lovingly placed above them, overlooking the mindboggling exhibition Unhinged: Opening the Door to the Dowse Collection which squeezes a third of the Dowse’s art collection into the museum’s 10 ground floor gallery spaces.
Born of necessity while the museum’s storage spaces are being extensively renovated, Unhinged is testimony to the diversity of the Dowse collection and the talent of its curators, who’ve creatively sorted and grouped over a thousand items from the collection – everything from small jewellery pieces to outsized children’s toys and a massive deconstructed staircase, with the historic pā taka Nuku Tewhatewha grounding the collection as its only permanent display.
With so many artworks on display, there’s something for everyone in Unhinged. Regular visitors will enjoy spotting favourite pieces from exhibitions gone by.
I have fond memories of my young children riding around the museum’s largest gallery on Scott Eady’s refurbished 100 Bikes back in 2011, a bunch of which are now suspended from the ceiling, soaring over the gallery in an apparent nod to the flying BMX bikes in the blockbuster 1980s sci-fi film E.T. I recall being struck by the beautiful simplicity of local artist Guy Ngan’s Kahikatea Carving No.7 when it was displayed in the Dowse lobby following his death in 2017, then seeing it again in a posthumous career retrospective two years later.
Elsewhere, items from the Dowse’s renowned ceramics collection are sorted by colour and displayed in their soon-to-beretired storage cabinets, with an impressive selection of glass works nearby, also arranged by colour. There’s a room full of portraits (the Dowses included, presiding over a ‘‘Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’’) and others of landscapes, textiles and jewellery.
There’s even a bunch of ‘‘collection conundrums’’ including controversial and physically degrading artworks, and a quirky magic wand commissioned to very particular instructions by former Dowse director James Mack.
Book in a visit or three to try and take it all in. It’s the Dowse’s biggest ever show, a hugely ambitious undertaking which will stand up to repeat visits.
Our city’s civic art collection is a joy to behold and a taonga we should all take great pride in. The same goes for the Dowse itself and the passionate staff who continue to break ground, bringing exciting new exhibitions and works to our attention while growing and caring for a truly impressive collection.