Current Exhibitions

 
Neil Pardington, Land Vertebrates Store #1, Auckland Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira 2008.  LED/C-print.  Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch

Neil Pardington: The Vault

17 December – 4 March

Glimpses into normally hidden spaces behind the scenes of New Zealand museums and galleries are offered by leading contemporary photographer Neil Pardington in his exhibition The Vault which features images revealing storage spaces that are normally closed to the public (including some at the Wanganui Regional Museum), exposing storehouses of memory and places filled with mystifying treasure.

They include photographs of animals and birds in taxidermy storerooms, paintings fastened to sliding storage walls, specimens in jars, rooms of mannequins, shelves of films in tins, taonga Māori, buildings full of army vehicles, textiles, card catalogues and much more.

“The Vault may be like a museum of museums, but it is also a metaphor for the idea of memory – both individual and collective,” says Curator Ken Hall. “Pardington’s gathering of storage spaces also suggests a vast collection of strange, unanticipated ‘found art’. Placed under a spotlight, the hidden back rooms and corners of our museums and galleries offer many thought-provoking and surprising tales.”

Hall also notes that Pardington's association with museums began shortly after graduating from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 1984, through his employment as designer/photographer at the Sarjeant Gallery. It is here in Wanganui that he became more deeply involved with large-format photography and seriously entered the arena of graphic design (another field in which he is highly regarded). Also significant from this time is his sharing of a darkroom with Laurence Aberhart (the inaugural artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage in 1986), who is acknowledged by Pardington as an important influence.

Pardington (Kai Tahu, Kati Mamoe, Kati Waewae, Pākehā) has exhibited nationally and internationally, and worked as a film-maker, artist and designer. One of his films has been shown at Cannes. He has steadily built a reputation as one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded photographers, and his work is now represented in many of the country’s major collections.

Neil will give a floor talk in the exhibition on Saturday, 4 February at 11am.

A Christchurch Art Gallery Touring Exhibition.

  

 
The Crystal Chain Gang:  Fancy Fools Flight 

Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams

10 December, 2011 – 26 February, 2012

Fancy Fools Flight is a new body of work by glass artists Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams, who since 2004 have worked collaboratively under the ‘Crystal Chain Gang’ banner. Together the pair have pushed the boundaries of the medium, utilising cast glass to create innovative work that traverses the boundaries of art, craft, design and industry.

For this body of work, the form of the bottle was their starting point. From being overlooked utilitarian functional objects, such as cut-glass decanters that reside on many household sideboards, they have amplified the form and turned up the fancy factor big time. Each of the bottles have stoppers which feature characters drawn from a wide variety of sources and as the pair state “the message is not in the bottle but it is the bottle itself....our intention is to stir memory and re-contextualise the bottle to try and engage the viewer in new and unexpected ways”. The cast of characters is certainly eclectic, and have been sourced from a huge image-bank, both real and imagined, featuring the likes of Queen Elizabeth II, James Cook and a variety of New Zealand birds. Dennison and Williams draw inspiration from a wide range of areas, including the history of glass-making abroad, from which they cite René Lalique and the elaborate glass furnishings created for Eastern Palaces during the nineteenth century as influences. Closer to home, New Zealand colonial history and objects and imagery sourced from second-hand shops all collide together.

Producing work in cast glass is an extremely labour intensive and time consuming process and working collaboratively is essential for the production of such highly detailed objects. As well as Dennison and Williams working fulltime on this body of work, they have also had a dedicated crew of between two and three studio assistants who have been vital in bringing the work to fruition. These objects have certainly been born of a gang and collectively the finished works form an unlikely crew all of their own.

The exhibition also features an impressive chandelier, fashioned from cast glass birds wings and feet. In 2012, the exhibition will tour to four other venues and in January the Sarjeant Gallery will publish a catalogue that will document the exhibition. We would like to thank Creative New Zealand who provided the Crystal Chain Gang with a grant to produce the work and also additional funding for the gallery to bring the publish a catalogue.

Greg Donson
Curator & Public Programmes Manager

 

Marion Maguire, The Dialogue of Titokowaru & Socrates, 2010

Titokowaru's Dilemma - Marian Maguire

29 October - 12 February, 2012

Titokowaru’s Dilemma represents the culmination of three years worth of research and print making by Marian Maguire, who is one of New Zealand’s most accomplished print makers. Having begun the research for this body of work in August of 2008, Maguire used her six week tenure as artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage in 2010 to further research the project and visit notable historic sites in the Whanganui and Taranaki regions. Although work on Titokowaru’s Dilemma began at Tylee Cottage, the production of the final suite of work that you see in the gallery now has been completed at Maguire’s Christchurch print studio, since late last year.