SOMETHING IN THE WATER
Artists working in Wanganui 1910 – 2012 

Charles Howarth, The Wanganui River, c.1910

The first section features the work of a number of artists whose work and reputation has survived and strengthened despite their passing. Edith Collier's standing as one of this city's most significant artists is reflected in the Sarjeant's on-going commitment to having her work on permanent display. In this exhibition a selection of works have been made that are indicative of key periods in her career, in the United Kingdom in London and St Ives and her return to New Zealand where her focus was primarily centred on landscapes.

Norman Hurn, Joan Grehan, Barbara McPhail and Neville Mawhinney were all resident in Wanganui in recent years and although their work may not have made a splash on the national art scene or have been shown widely in public art galleries, they all made valuable contributions to the local arts community and each of them are included in the Gallery's Collection. Each had an entirely different focus in their practice and are represented here by works that are indicative of some of the finest examples of their output.

Joanna Paul (1945 – 2003) was resident in Wanganui from 1984 and, during her time here, the Gallery acquired some fine examples of her work for the Collection. Plato's Cave / Wanganui River, 1987 is Paul at her best and this work is also a touchstone for the title of the exhibition. Paul’s ‘something in the water’ is the slightest of lines and reflections from sky and the surrounding riverside.

The second section of the exhibition features the work of artists who moved to Wanganui and have remained for a variety of reasons – employment, the arts community, environment or as artists-in-residence at Tylee Cottage. Each of these artists are represented by works from the collection and these are complimented by contemporary works that are indicative of their current focus. The artists included are Brit Bukley, Sue Cooke, Andrea du Chatenier, Peter Ireland, David Murray, Prakash Patel, Paul Rayner and Rick Rudd.

To conclude is a portion of the Gallery space focusing on the work of a number of artists who have spent time in Wanganui as artists-in-residence at Tylee Cottage, with the exception of photographer Neil Pardington who was employed at the Sarjeant Gallery in the 1980s. All of these artists, (excepting our current artist-in-residence, Ann Shelton) left Wanganui but their time here is marked by a selection of works that have come into the Collection and are indicative of the productivity experienced when people come to Wanganui as the artist-in-residence. Mervyn Wllliams, Julian Hooper and Charles Butcher all created bodies of work that were indicative of a shift in each artists oeuvre. Photographer Ann Shelton is the current artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage and in the year to come we look forward to seeing the work she produces during her three months in Wanganui.

We hope you enjoy this selection of works from our Collection and beyond and agree with us that there must be 'something in the water' that has attracted and sustained such a rich platform of artistic talent in our community.

COME BACK:  A Dome Installation by Sarah Maxey

15 December 2012 - 12 May 2013

Sarah Maxey is a graphic designer and handlettering artist with a distinguished career in book design. She has produced award-winning work for literary publishers in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It is her collaborative work with poets in particular that has inspired her to develop her own singular voice in concrete poetry using hand-drawn type. Concrete poetry is that in which the typographic arrangement of words is as important in conveying the conventional elements such as text, meaning and rhythm.

Maxey has recently returned to New Zealand after eighteen months in the United Kingdom and Germany and is currently regrouping on the banks of the Whanganui River. On her arrival in Wanganui, the Sarjeant Gallery commissioned Maxey to develop a site specific text based work for the central dome and 'Comeback' is the result.

Moving from the page to the room is a giant leap and the drawing that Maxey produced for 'Comeback' was tiny - just A5 - and she is interested in the way that meaning can be altered by a change in scale. On the page, the word feels plaintive and sorrowful, like a request for a return. Enlarged, it feels like a confident return to action.

Maxey lived in Wanganui as a teenager in the 1980s and remembers spending a lot of time in the Sarjeant Gallery, she comments "It's a great honour to be back installing my own work in the dome, and it feels like a comeback of sorts. I've also just returned to New Zealand so the notion of reappearance is on my mind". Growing up Maxey was an avid reader and from an early age this interest was coupled with an innate love of letterforms and she cites being completely obsessed with her own handwriting from the age of about seven. For this installation Maxey has hand painted each of the letters directly onto the walls of the dome. Training as a textile designer has influenced the forms of the letters with each resembling folded fabric, as though they could easily be removed from the wall and be packed away for a 'comeback' somewhere else.

As a space the Sarjeant's dome has the dual purpose of drawing visitors to the centre of the symmetrical Greek cross that forms the Gallery and at the same time it also pushes people into the wonderfully distracting wings filled with more art. Maxey has played on this point of axis by encouraging us to stand at the centre and let our eyes travel around the eight wall surfaces of the dome to take in the word. The letters are at once beautifully crafted forms in their own right but their connection to one another spans each of the four openings to the wings, and rather than a broken line of text, Maxey has made a continual thread.

In contrast to the controlled letterforms of comeback, Maxey has also handwritten couplets of words that occupy and agitate the bases of the four niches. From where you are standing it looks as though someone has been dancing in the discs with grubby boots, on closer inspection we find that each has been filled with two words. When read from any starting point and working in a clockwise or anticlockwise rotation around the four niches these form a poem that Maxey has penned in response to the Whanganui River. Maxey comments that as a teenager she barely noticed the river but as an adult she has gained a new found respect and admiration for it and the poem is an exploration of continuous flow.

Greg Donson

COLLECTION FOCUS: Photography

16 February - 7 April

William Lee-Hankey, The Rivals

The Sarjeant Gallery is fortunate to have one of the finest collections of photography in New Zealand. This collection began shortly after the Gallery opened in 1919 when noted Wanganui photographer Frank Denton was commissioned by the Gallery’s governing committee to acquire a collection of international Pictorialist photography. The fruits of Denton’s labour were first presented at an exhibition in September 1926.

It has only been since the late 1970s and 1980s that collecting photography has been considered a legitimate and worthy medium to be acquired by public galleries in New Zealand. That Frank Denton assembled this collection so early on in the Sarjeant’s collecting history makes it remarkable in that the Gallery was not only the first in this country to start collecting photography but one of the earliest in the world, the first being the Victoria and Albert Museum in London which began collecting photography in 1856.

 

Although Denton’s contribution was critical to establishing a precedent for collecting photography it was most notably under the leadership of the Gallery’s second professional director Bill Milbank in the late 1970s that the Gallery again actively acquired contemporary photography.  Fostering relationships with a stable of photographers who have since gone on to become New Zealand’s leading photographic practitioners has meant that the Gallery is fortunate to have been able to purchase the work of these artists at the early stages of their careers.  In turn they have been very generous in donating works to the Collection.

Alongside the work of Frank Denton the exhibition features a selection of works from five other photographers - Peter Peryer, Wayne Barrar, Ans Westra, Anne Noble and Paul Johns with the latter three having all participated in the Sarjeant Gallery’s artist-in-residence scheme at Tylee Cottage.

This exhibition provides both a snapshot of the oeuvre of six key photographers featured in the collection and a snapshot of the Gallery’s rich photographic collection, for which we would require the entire gallery and then some.

Greg Donson

Curator & Public Programmes Manager

OPERATION FIZZ!
A Painting Expedition by Glenn Burrell

27 October 2012 - 17 March 2013

Glenn Burrell, Skis, Tukino Ski Field, Mount Ruapehu, September 2012

Over the last decade, Glenn Burrell has been pushing the boundaries of what a painting can or should be. His work has no support, no canvas, no board, no stretcher, it is pure paint and regular acrylic paint at that.

It was during his final six months of art school in Taranaki, while working on a house painting job, that Burrell first became interested in the three dimensional possibilities of paint. The owner of the property removed the interior skin of paint from a four litre tin and threw it to Burrell exclaiming “see how much of my paint you’ve wasted”. From there, Burrell experimented in covering objects with layers of paint and then removing the ‘skins’ from the host. His first object was a banana and over the last decade his ambition and confidence with this painting methodology has spanned the mini to the maxi; from gold ants and flies, to a candy pink trampoline complete with springs.

Burrells’ choice of objects is very considered and all of them have been drawn from the everyday. Often he has taken objects that have active qualities - a lawnmower, a bicycle, a wheelchair - all of which imply or require energy and movement. In creating paint skins from these objects, Burrell has de-activated, relaxed and disabled them. There was nothing abstract about these works, they were and are literally paintings of themselves.

The idea of pushing the boundaries of painting is not a new one; painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Yves Klein all explored the physicality and spatial realms of paint in different ways. With an inventory of everyday objects under his paintskin belt and an interest in the kinetic and perfomative qualities of paint, Burrell has set about to fabricate a relationship where he could become an active agent in the secret life of paint and that is what is presented here in the Gallery.

The idea for Burrell’s ‘painting expedition’ originated from his time as artist-in-residence from May – July, 2011 at Tylee Cottage here in Wanganui. Over the last year Burrell has made a series of objects – skis, gumboots, a car tyre, bicycle and skateboard wheels, flippers and more recently and ambitiously a paint skin dreamboat. All of these objects have been tested by Burrell in the field at sites in the lower North Island and the results of this madcap relay have been captured in film and photography. What is displayed in the Gallery are the battered remains of these objects after the act, scuffed, broken and splintered to reveal the strata within. The final objects in their half alive half dead state capture the fizz of the events that took place. In his own words Burrell comments ...

What has resulted is a vision of My Utopia.  A soft metamorphic world of paint componentry set within fantastical landscapes. A fusion of painting, snow, sunshine, atmosphere, adrenaline, and fun. For me these works capture a dreamlike state, with make believe equipment that doesn’t seem right but comes together in its own haphazard way. With each new project I’m extracting a new bit of magic out of the material. Unorthodox, incongruous, but somehow strangely right. These works are a juxtaposition of cartoon plasticity and the real world around us.

Greg Donson

MARY MACPHERSON: Old New World

8 December 2012 – 3 March 2013

Mary Macpherson, Queenstown, Otago 2010 (sculpture by Robin Coleman)

The Sarjeant Gallery is pleased to host Mary Macpherson’s exhibition Old New World, a photographic study of the changing face of small town New Zealand.

With a keen eye for detail and irony, Wellington poet and photographer, Mary Macpherson spent seven years travelling around the country documenting the changing face of small town New Zealand. This has culminated in an intriguing exhibition of 46 colour photographs along with a significant new book of New Zealand photography, entitledOld New World.

The striking colour photographs feature buildings, houses, statues and murals to tell the story of a shift from the remains of the traditional New Zealand of the 1950s and 60s to places of boom and prosperity that look very different to our remembered past.

“Within that major story arc, I wanted to show the major social and economic trends I saw over the seven years – towns painting up the main street to attract custom and celebrate their identity, places that remained resolutely themselves and those that were heading into decline,” – Mary Macpherson.

The exhibition is accompanied by the book which features an interview between noted art writer Gregory O’Brien and Mary Macpherson and 62 full page images. The photographs cover towns in many regions including Southland, Otago, Canterbury, Marlborough, Wellington, Taranaki, Manawatu-Whanganui, Gisborne and the Bay of Plenty.  

ART / MEMORY

13 October - 2 December

James Scott (New Zealand, b.1877, d.1932), Looking Backwards, oil on board (detail)

Memory is tricky; it can at once aid and fool us.  For centuries we have developed and relied on memory aids to deal with this complexity, from pen and paper to memory sticks.  However one of the oldest and most constant memory aids has been art.  From cave art to photography and painting, visually capturing a moment, scene, person or idea has been a central part of artistic practice.

Some art works have memory at their core and explore the function of memory itself.  In Christine Webster's Rememberer we see a bejewelled and scantily clad woman cradling a gilt frame to her face. The woman's expression is one of longing and wistfulness, as she reflects on her glory days she is the manifestation of an 'obsession with memory'. Oliver Zahm, Fatal Song (text translated from French, written for Clark T. and Curnow, W. (eds), The Players, from Pleasures & Dangers, Longaman & Paul, 1991 http://www.christinewebster.co.uk/texts/text1.html, accessed 30 August 2012).  She exemplifies the struggle between the perceptions we have of ourselves, the way we remember ourselves, and reality. She embodies the stereotype that the best days are experienced in our youth and the memories of that sustain our later years.

Nostalgia is powerful and in works such as Looking Backwards by James Scott we see its influence in full force. Pictured is an elegantly wigged lady poised in an iridescent pink gown of true Eighteenth Century fashion, however this is not a painting from the 1700s. While the date of the work is unknown the life dates of the artist show that it was almost certainly painted in the early Twentieth Century. Powdered wigs and pannier's were not de rigueur when James Scott was working, meaning this painting, as indicated by the title, was intended as a homage to the grand full length portraits of the past.

TOI / MAHARA

4 August - 2 December

When Charles Frederick Goldie created his portraits of Māori subjects in the early Twentieth century he did so believing he was documenting a dying race. His paintings were going to serve as memorials to a departed race, and in a way they do. His portraits, like the paintings in this exhibition by Louis Steele, Charles Barraud and J. A. Gilfillan, act as painted memories of traditions, whakapapa and a unique way of life which is in many ways different from today. Coloured by each artist’s European heritage these paintings are romanticised views of ‘noble savages’ and curiosities. Absent from them is a uniquely Māori point of view.

Contemporary Māori artists question their place in the art world and the role Māori traditions and beliefs have in modern life. Cliff Whiting combines traditional carving with contemporary art aesthetics in Korero, Shane Cotton explores the role of landscape and language in Tera Tētahi Manu, while Darcy Nicholas in The Land is My Ancestor I and Emily Karaka withTangata Kore (Cut Off Man) explore whenua (land) and its complex place in New Zealand history.

Peter Robinson’s Untitled, from his percentage series of the early 1990s, is concerned with Māori identity and the idea that ethnicity and cultural identity can be arbitrarily determined by a blood sample. With his use of bitumen, a material used in roading, as well as the inclusion of a car in the painting, Robinson is questioning where identity sits in the modern urban environment, with so many Māori displaced from their marae and iwi, and the dislocation from shared cultural memories this brings.

Art is taonga, treasures which connect us to the past. Inanga, Heitiki, North Island (Toru Tekau ma Rua), Okains Bay Maori and Colonial Museum byFiona Pardington fits within the tradition of the photographic still life. However she is not interested in simply capturing the physical presence of taonga, but also its spiritual importance as a tangible link to the past.

PAUL KNIGHT: Two Small Places on Opposite Coasts

A Photographic Recollection of 1960s Japan
29 September to 25 November

Paul Knight, Winter-lotus

When Paul Knight arrived in Japan on a UNESCO grant in 1960 he quickly purchased two Asahi Pentax cameras and multiple lenses and set about taking photographs.  The landscape, with its soft light, hazy skies, sharp seasonal changes, new shapes, textures and subtle shades of colour were of great inspiration to him. Knight was particularly captured by bamboo, maple, various land and water grasses and the blending of natural and man-made elements in the environment. The people and lifestyles of Japan were in stark contrast to 1960s life in New Zealand and Knight was interested in capturing the realities of small town Japan.

The photographs in this exhibition were taken, as the title tells us, in two small places on opposite coasts of Japan. The first is Wajima, part of the Noto Peninsular on the coast of the Japan Sea.  The area is protected from the harshest coastal weather and is known for its picturesque and mountainous coastline. The second is the small fishing village of Seto Hinase on the coast of the Inland Sea. The three Bizen Yaki pots in this exhibition were the catalyst for Knight's discovery of Seto Hinase. He was on the coastal train on his way to Bizen district to visit the pottery when he looked out of the window and saw the village. Through his window he saw fishermen hard at work and bustling markets, he immediately knew that he had to photograph this place.

Edward Burne-Jones, Thisbe, oil on canvas

THISBE, PHEASBIN & THE TALL TAHITIANS

16 August to 25 November

The Sarjeant Gallery's permanent collection consists of over five and a half thousand artworks, spanning four centuries of European and New Zealand art history. As with any collection, this one has grown organically and is rich, varied and eclectic, comprised of gifts and acquisitions. Each work in the collection has its own narrative, subject, provenance and often silence.

This exhibition takes as its starting point some recent acquisitions that have come into the collection, mostly as a result of the gallery's artist-in-residence programme at Tylee Cottage. Established in 1986, this programme has hosted over thirty artists all of whom have contributed to the gallery's collection via a work or works that are offered in exchange for a monthly stipend during the residency. This exchange has provided a vital and lively thread to the gallery's holdings and each new work has sparked new conversations with others. The exhibition on offer here doesn't aim to give visitors a comprehensive view of the collection but rather glimpses of the many chapters on offer.

Jeffrey Harris,Head in Winter, 1999, print

HIBERNATION: Winter Works from the Collection

23 June – 14 October

When it is grey, cold, dark and damp nothing seems more attractive than staying inside, keeping warm and hibernating. Like bears denning for the winter, we humans often withdraw - into houses, our thick coats and ourselves. This exhibition explores the feeling, colour and idea of winter.

Winter is a rich source of material and metaphor used often in art and literature. Poets and writers such as William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, William Blake and Robert Frost have all used winter in their work to express death, pain, melancholy, loneliness and endings. In the visual arts these themes are similarly entiwned. We imagine winter as desolate and colourless and in Gate 16 Colin McCahon used his signature black and white composition to explore winter as the end of all things - nuclear war and nuclear winter. Several of the extended labels in this exhibition use quotes from poems, songs, plays and books to further exemplify the place winter has in the arts as a source of inspiration.

Winter can be very sad, but if we take the time to emerge from hibernation we can see it is also a time of great splendour. Michael Smither’s Mount Egmont and William Barraud’s Dawn on Aorangi show us the beauty of a New Zealand winter. The mountains are clothed in the pristine white blanket of snow which makes the landscapes of New Zealand so entrancing during the winter months. The light here is unique and during the short winter days light plays an important role in how we experience the world. In his Winter Solstice/Spring Equinox '83 series John Bailey explores the movement of light, while Ralph Hotere in June, July and August also works with light and colour through the passage of time. Colour is incredibly emotive and each carries meaning and connotations - yellow is the sun, blue the sky and red is danger. The colours we associate with winter are those which dominate this exhibition - black, white, grey and a splash of icy blue. In these colours we see the long dark nights, snow covered mountains, cloudy skies and icy mornings of winter.

The paintings and prints in this exhibition spend much of their life tucked away from harsh light and extreme temperatures to ensure they are safe. They live in their own state of hibernation until they are put on public display.

Rona 

WHARE TAONGA
Alexis Neal & Rona Ngāhuia Osborne

12 May – 30 September

Rona Ngāhuia Osborne’s practice is based around two central ideas – Diversity and Trade. She has become well known for the hand stitched blankets that feature in this exhibition. Her work primarily references themes relating to a cultural/historical context in Aotearoa. Her imagery has a strong Maori component and incorporates colonial symbols and iconography, which reflect Osborne’s own family heritage. Working with blankets evolved from the idea of the colonial trade value of European objects for Maori land. The exhibition features twelve of these beautifully hand crafted quilts which are laid out on mattresses on the floor of the gallery space.

Together the work of Alexis and Rona is a rich celebration of their ideas of the whare nui as a whole, exploring cultural identity and representation and society in transition. The essence of the whare nui structure is key to the project and the exhibition pays homage to their cultural heritage and the importance of the whare nui in contemporary society.

Richard Parker (Installation)

RICHARD PARKER
Master of Craft

16 June - 16 September 2012

Richard Parker:  Master of Craft surveys the career and practice of this defining figure within New Zealand ceramics, with works loaned from leading public and private collections around the country. The curator, Richard Fahey, says "Parker had his own picture of what a pot should look like", and that although Parker's practice is grounded within the traditions of studio ceramics, "As an artist, his innovative approach seeks to redefine for us new ways we may understand the decorative object."

At a pivotal moment in his career Richard Parker abandoned the known in terms of how to make a pot and what it should look like and developed his own unique ceramics vocabulary. This singular vision has sustained his career for over 30 years and produced works that are uniquely recognisable. Parker is noted for a variety of distinctive decorative forms frequently embellished with dashes, dots and dribbles in luscious glazes of red and green, black and cream, and his signature green and gold. 

John Roy, Wrestler, 2012, earthenware

JOHN ROY:  Bending Hammers

17March - 12 August

Tauranga-based artist John Roy was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage from February – April, 2011. A graduate of the Wanganui Regional Polytechnic, 1997, Roy is primarily known for his work in ceramics, this exhibition features a suite of pen and ink drawings that he created during his time in Wanganui in 2011. Inspired by the pigeons that gather on the outside of the gallery’s dome, Roy has created his own flock of colourful ceramic pigeons that roost on the high ledges of the domes interior. For the exhibition Roy has created four large scale works that occupy the niches in the dome, these figurative works were inspired by the form of the Durie Hill Tower which also appears in the drawings. This exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of 

Norm Heke, Hinetitama/Hinenuitepo, 2011, digital photograph, lenticular print

NORM HEKE
OMGs:  Māori Gods in the 21st Century
12 May - 29 July

Norm Heke (Ngā Puhi, Ngati Kahu,Te Arawa, Welsh and English ) is one of New Zealand's most prolific Museum Photographers.  His work has featured in numerous publications and exhibitions throughout his career.  Norm is a photographer and imaging specialist at The Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, where he has been creating imagery and film since 1991.  Norm was the first photographer to receive the Toi Iho trade mark acknowledging quality Māori Art.

OMGs short for Oh My Gods and Goddesses, was an opportunity to combine extensive skill with a passion for New Zealand culture and history.  Norm's current practice is to explore the intersection between still and moving imagery. 

About the exhibition Norm says... "I wanted to give Māori gods a renewed presence in contemporary culture, by modernising the characters and context.  They are indigenous super heroes and their stories are what make our culture uniuqe.  These are but a few of the multitude of legends handed down from generation to generation."

Lynley Dodd - Shoo

LYNLEY DODD:  A Retrospective

10 March - 10 June

This exhibition is a celebration of works by Dame Lynley Dodd throughout her prolific career as author and illustrator of children’s books. Dodd’s bouncy rhyme and lively illustrations make her stories much-loved by readers of all ages.

Tauranga-based Dodd began her career in children’s books in 1973 when she collaborated with Eve Sutton to illustrate My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes. She followed on with several of her own books, The Nickle Nackle Tree and Titimus Trim. Then in 1983, Dodd produced the first of the series of books on the infamous Hairy Maclary, which would warm the hearts of thousands of children worldwide and for which she has achieved international renown.

Since then, much of Dodd’s work has revolved around the cheeky black pup and his sidekicks. Many of her books, including those featuring Hairy Maclary and Slinki Malinki, have been shortlisted for the Children’s Picture Book of the Year Award, which Dodd won outright in 1984, 1986, 1988, and 1992.

This exhibition contains original drawings for these books, which have never before been shown to the public, and it is also an opportunity to display the workings of how picture books are made and characters created.

This exhibition has been developed by Tauranga Art Gallery and toured by Exhibition Services Tours. 

 

Peter Peryer - Neenish Tarts, 1984

Collection Focus - Photography
Laurence Aberhart, Richard Wotton, Peter Peryer
To 10 June

The Sarjeant Gallery is fortunate to have one of the finest collections of photography in New Zealand. This collection began shortly after the gallery opened in 1919, when noted Wanganui photographer Frank Denton began to acquire a collection of international Pictorialist photography. The fruits of Denton’s labour were first presented at an exhibition in September 1926.

Since that time, but particularly from the ninety eighties to the present day, the Gallery has established a fine collection of work by New Zealand photographers, many of whom have gone on to become leading figures in New Zealand art history. At that time photography was only just emerging from the shadows as painting’s poor cousin, so the acquisition of works by a gallery with a small acquisition budget, was a relatively affordable exercise. This coupled with the generosity of photographers who were in the early stages of their career and who gifted works to the Gallery, has led to the institution having the impressive holdings that it has today.

This small exhibition features the work of three photographers - Laurence Aberhart, Richard Wotton and Peter Peryer, all of whom have had long standing relationships with the Sarjeant Gallery.

Laurence Aberhart was the inaugural artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage in 1986. Administered by the Sarjeant Gallery, the residency programme is the longest running of its kind in New Zealand. Aberhart was in residence for a year and during that time he produced many images that have now become key works in his oeuvre, one of which is the work Nature Morte (Silence) 1986 which was taken in Wanganui’s savage club and opens the suite of works selected here. In 2002 curator Justin Paton described Aberhart as "the essential visual poet of New Zealand’s past, an artist of uncanny persistence…"

Richard Wotton began seriously focusing on photography after seeing the 1975 exhibition The Active Eye at the Manawatu Art Gallery. Although Wotton has had an ongoing interest in architecture and this is what currently drives his most recent practice, this body of work displays his carefully attuned eye to everyday details. Wotton finds rhythm, line and light in the most unlikely of places, this is particularly evident in a series of three colour photographs entitled Tape Works.

Peter Peryer took up photography at the age of 32 and since that time he has gone on to become one of New Zealand’s most respected photographers with major solo exhibitions at the Sarjeant in 1985 and 1997. Like Wotton, Peryer has a careful and curious eye for the overlooked and the photographs featured here focus on uncelebrated aspects of the everyday. Here, neenish tarts, jam rolls and a page of braille become landscapes of line and pattern. In 1995 writer Helen Ennis noted "The "thingness" of Peter Peryer’s subjects is respected – indeed, loved. Peryer’s world is not divided into the human and non-human, the living and the dead, the superior and inferior. The nature of the species or substances photographed is not an issue – animals, birds, people, natural and made things, all are given the same rapt attention."

We hope you enjoy this small selection of images from our rich photographic collection.

Greg Donson
Curator and Public Programmes Manager

CHARLES BUTCHER & COBI COCKBURN

The Long Black Veil

11 February - 6 May

The Long Black Veil is the result of a years worth of hard work by Australian artists Charles Butcher and Cobi Cockburn who have been artists-in-residence at Tylee Cottage since August, 2011 and resident in Wanganui since February, 2011. One of the expectations of the residency programme is that the resident artist/s engage with this place and this community. Some residents stay for three months, enough time for them to dip their toes in the river, so to speak, others like Charles and Cobi jump right in for full immersion. The pair have saturated themselves in this place, their work and their thoughts.

Although relatively unknown to New Zealand audiences, over the last few years the pair have scooped some major awards in Australia. Most recently Charles was selected as a finalist in the 2011 Blake Prize, Australia’s oldest award for spiritually based artworks. Cobi was selected as a finalist in the 2010 Wynne Prize, for Australian landscape painting which is held in conjunction with the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In June, 2011 her entire solo exhibition Esse, being in the abstract was purchased by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

 
Bottle, Nelson, 1950s. Manganese salt glaze, 180 x 100. Collection of Mirek Smíšek

Mirek Smíšek: 60 Years 60 Pots

18 February – 1 April

Curator Gary Freemantle has selected 60 pots spanning 60 years of Smíšek’s work from private and public collections around New Zealand. They represent Smíšek’s main forms of vases, bowls, crocks, jugs and Yunomi (Japanese tea-bowls) and the variations in glaze, shape and decoration as his work matured.

Smíšek began his life with clay in Canberra in 1948, worked briefly at Crown Lynn in Auckland in 1951, then established Nelson’s first full-time studio pottery in 1954. In the 1960s and 70s he worked and studied with international pottery masters Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada at St Ives, Cornwall, and in Japan. Smíšek is still producing new pots that provide a useful function in people’s daily lives while also being objects of aesthetic beauty, conveying his love of natural forms.

   

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.

 
Jim Dennison & Leanne Williams, Polly 2006

THE CRYSTAL CHAIN GANG: Fancy Fools Flight
10 December – 26 February

 Titokowaru’s Dilemma
Marian Maguire

29 October to 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 was undertaken at Maguire's Christchurch print studio.

Dr Elizabeth Rankin's engagement with the three suites of prints which form the exhibition brings to light the themes that underpin Maguire's new work:  

The protagonist of Titokowaru's Dilemma, is an impressive figure who embodies the complexities and contradictions of nineteenth-century New Zealand history.  Titokowaru was a trained Maori tohunga but a Christian convert; an advocate of peace but an outstanding military strategist; a powerful and charismatic leader but one who lost the support of his followers.  Rather than simply confusing us, these diverse characteristics offer a more nuanced understanding of Titokowaru than we might have of more conventional early New Zealanders.  And it was this that made him an absorbing subject for Maguire, whose prints exploring colonial history challenge simplistic readings of the past.

In the prints, Maguire continues to develop her distinctive imagery drawn from ancient and colonial sources.  The bold silhouettes of Greek vase paintings are particularly evident in her black-and-white etchings, such as those depicting amorous adventures involving Greek gods, Maori maidens, satyrs and settlers, in a series entitled Colonial Encounters.  In the large colour lithographs of Titokowaru's Dilemma, figures of similar style and clarity are set into New Zealand landscapes based on colonial paintings and photographs. 

Presenting Titokowaru more as a thinking man than a fighter, Maguire frames his story in terms of the kind of questions that Socrates asked - we discover him debating 'what is virtue?' with Socrates, or discussing 'what is peace?' with his compatriot Te Whiti.  In A Taranaki Dialogue, the enquiry continues in a series of small etchings of the Taranaki landscape, finally focussing on two questions that seem to underpin Maguire's project as a whole:  it is she, as much as Socrates or Titokowaru, who asks us, 'what is myth?' and 'what is history?'.

Graham Percy - A Kiwi in Venice, 2004 (used with the permission of the Estate of Graham Percy)

The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy

19 November to 29 January, 2012

Ways of Seeing (1972).

The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy rediscovers the life and work of one of New Zealand's most talented and original artists.

Born in Stratford in 1938, Graham Percy studied at Elam School of Fine Arts before embarking on a career as an illustrator/designer/artist and producing pivotal works for the New Zealand School Journal as well as designing book covers and award-winning Crown Lynn crockery. Percy left New Zealand in the mid-1960s and became a hugely respected artist/illustrator/typographer overseas, while at the same time producing a remarkable body of his own independent art.

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 was undertaken at Maguire’s Christchurch print studio.

Dr Elizabeth Rankin’s engagement with the three suites of prints which form the exhibition brings to light the themes that underpin Maguire’s new work:

In the prints, Maguire continues to develop her distinctive imagery drawn from ancient and colonial sources. The bold silhouettes of Greek vase paintings are particularly evident in her black-and-white etchings, such as those depicting amorous adventures involving Greek gods,

The protragonist of Titokowaru's Dilemma, is an impressive figure who embodies the complexities and contraditions of nineteenth-century New Zealand history. Tītokowaru was a trained Māori tohunga but a Christian convert; an advocate of peace but an outstanding military strategist; a powerful and charismatic leader but one who lost the support of his followers. Rather than simply confusing us, these diverse characteristics offer a more nuanced understanding of Tītokowaru than we might have of more conventional early New Zealanders. And it was this that made him an absorbing subject for Maguire, whose prints exploring colonial history challenge simplistic readings of the past.

Percy illustrated over 100 children's books, including Gerald Durrell’s Fantastic Flying Journey, and editions of Wind in the Willows, Aesop’s Fables and Arabian Nights. As well as undertaking illustrations and art design for film and television projects such as Hugo the Hippo (1973) and

During the last decade of his life Percy put commissioned work behind him and focused on his own drawings, in many of these late images he returns to his childhood, not only imagining himself as a child, but also engaging imaginatively with objects around his home, including toy train-sets, tin motorcyclists, dolls and a myriad of other objects. Percy also spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be an artist – particularly a New Zealand artist, a Kiwi, working abroad. He lived and worked in London until his death in 2008.

We are very pleased that Mari Mahr, Graham’s widow, has gifted five of his works to the Sarjeant Gallery four of which are represented in the exhibition. These are a splendid and valuable addition to our collection, and we would like to thank Mari for her generosity.

 
Maragaret Silverwood - Dear Diary

Everday Irregular

17 September - 7 December, 2011

everyday of or happening every day, daily; common, usual; appropriate or pertaining to weekdays, not Sunday...

irregular not regular; not conforming to rule or to the ordinary rules; disorderly; uneven; unsymmetrical; variable...

EVERYDAY IRREGULAR brings together the work of eight artists whose work muses on the everyday, be that through their choice of object or subject to draw, photograph, paint or animate, or through sculpture to literally reconfigure an everyday object into something remarkable. These artists encourage us to consider the ‘things’ in the world that surround us, that often we pass by, throw away or resent. In saying this, they are not paying homage to the objects they depict and use to make art but pressing us to consider the massive amount of things required for daily existence and order in our lives; of how numb we are to stillness and to really looking at the detail of our immediate surroundings and that sometimes the most ordinary of objects can actually be, in a particular light, quietly beautiful.

Painter Glenn Burrell takes functional ‘active’ objects, covers them in paint and then painstakingly removes the skins, creating disabled facsimile objects in a spectrum of pastel colours. Burrell’s work is a curious morphing of the ready-made, painting and sculpture. In contrast, sculptures by Rob Cherry mash together found objects in a glorious cacophony of colour, line and absurdity.

For Bill Culbert, other people’s unwanted goods offer opportunities for transformation, via the illumination of these objects with fluorescent tubes. When dissected by light, detergent bottles and a 1950s Formica table have never looked so elegant and striking. Jill Kennedy’s animations take us on a journey of domestic confusion, where ants, rats and hypnotic cats rule the roost.

Meanwhile, the meticulous drawings of Margaret Silverwood are a commentary on how often our daily existence anaesthetises us to the presence of other species and to indulging our own interior worlds of imagination and memory. Kevin Capon’s photographs elevate everyday objects and events to the realm of the quietly heroic, while at the same time charging them with a simmering suburban tension.

A similar tension can be found in the inky blackness of Roberta Thornley’s beautiful photographs of everyday and throw-away objects, each of the images attaining a Cluedo-like quality. The arresting paintings of Jude Rae take the idea of still life into another realm. Here, the objects are assembled as though they are recipes for tension and action: the pressure of gas cylinders, the possibility of a table-top flood, an orange rolling into the gallery space.

If anything, the work featured in this exhibition is testament to the amazing ability of an image or an object to literally stop you in your tracks and allow you to view the world momentarily through someone else’s eyes. Our own everyday becomes irregular.

Greg Donson
Curator/Public Programmes Manager

In the Garden

 
Joanna Braithwaite - Chook, chook, chook

JOANNA BRAITHWAITE: Significant Others 

Philip Trusttum - Anthem

Don't the boys play well!
Philip Trusttum deconstructs rugby

26 August - 6 November, 2011

A lively exhibition of large-scale paintings by renowned Christchurch-based artist Philip Trusttum.  Assembled as giant collages in the Gallery, the works explore our national game.

2011 Pattillo Award

October 7 - October 29, 2011

A mixed media award exhibition open to Whanganui UCOL fine arts students.  Kindly sponsored by Pattillo Ltd and judged by Louis Le Vaillant, Director/Curator WR Johnston Collection, East Melbourne; Justine Olsen, Curator Contemporary Decorative Arts, Te Papa and Greg Anderson, Senior Curator Sarjeant Gallery.  The Awards will be announced on Friday 14th October. 

Edith Collier - Portrait of a Woman

Edith Collier:  Drawings
13 August - 2 October, 2011

This small exhibition brings together a selection of Collier's drawings, all of which were completed during her time abroad.  From sketchy figure studies, to small studies of London buildings to accomplished charcoal portraits, all of these works demonstrate Collier's command at drawing.

 
Mari Mahr- Edinburgh

Mari Mahr - Two Walking

23 July - 11 September, 2011

There is perhaps no stronger image o closeness than that of two people walking together.  Two Walk  in Paris and Two Walk in Edinburgh - sixteen black and white photographs by Mari Mahr, accompanied by texts from Wellington poets Jenny Bornholdt and Gregory O'Brien - register that intimacy. 

Bryce Smith presenting Katherine Claypole with the 2011 Carey Smith & Co Ltd Whanganui Arts Review Open Award

2011 CAREY SMITH & CO. LTD
WHANGANUI ARTS REVIEW

2 July - 4 September, 2011

Now in its 23rd year this exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to view a range of work in a variety of media from a wide spectrum of artists living in the Whanganui region. This year, 161 artists submitted work and from these 114 were selected for the exhibition. Congratulations to Katherine Claypole this year's Carey Smith & Co. Ltd Open Award winner and to Bonnie Wroe the 2011 Carey Smith & Co. Ltd Student Award winner. Download the full list of 2011 Award recipients.

Ans Westra:  Selected Photographs - people of the Whanganui Region
21 May - 21 August

Ans Westra is one of New Zealand's most respected and accomplished documentary photographers.  After arriving in the country from her native Holland, Westra made her first trip up the Whanganui River in 1960 and began an engagement with the people of the region that continues to this day.  This exhibition is drawn from the Sarjeant Gallery's collection and features work from the early 1960s to the early 1990s, taking in settlements on the Whanganui River, at Ratana and a selection of works undertaken whilst Westra was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage in 1993.

Emily Wolfe, The Folly

Sleight of Hand
4 June - 21 August, 2011

A touring exhibition from the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson, exploring a strand of contemporary art practice that is engaged with classical art traditions. It includes artworks that exhibit a high degree of novelty and difficulty and demonstrate a range of illusory effects. Artists featured are Sam Harrison, Megan Jenkinson, John Ward Knox, Julia Morison, Joe Sheehan, Peter Gibson Smith, Mervyn Williams and Emily Wolfe.

Strange Frequencies
Works by Edith Collier Meet New Companions from the Permanent Collection
6 November 2010 - 30 July, 2011

The Sarjeant Gallery has a vast collection of more than 5500 works in its care and among those is a significant body of work by the Wanganui-born painter Edith Collier (1885–1964). In 1985, the Collier family placed a significant portion of the artist’s work on long-term loan to the Sarjeant Gallery and from that time her work has regularly featured in the gallery’s programming. Since 1997, a dedicated gallery space has been focused on showing this rich collection, and over the last thirteen years there have been many different curatorial approaches taken in considering Collier’s work.

Although transistor radios are becoming a thing of the past, most people can remember the childhood wonder of turning the dial and discovering a spectrum of threads of noise: voices talking, singing and white noise in between, not quite knowing where the frequency came from or how; it was just there and available, public and private at the same time. Similarly, the collection of any art gallery is the same: there are endless frequencies to pick up on – in the Sarjeant’s case, more than 5500 of them. Each work has its own narratives that fade away, amplify and evolve over the years. This exhibition spans two gallery spaces and takes examples of work by Edith Collier and places them alongside others that somehow belong to the same frequency; sometimes the connection is obvious, sometimes not. By viewing a broad range of works by Collier we can also see how the artist’s style evolved and was informed by her overseas life and artistic experiences in Britain and Ireland from 1913 to 1921. The works in the first part of the exhibition investigate elements of architecture and landscape, while in the North Gallery the portrait looms large. The exhibition features a broad spectrum of works, including photography, drawings and paintings and includes one of the gallery’s most beloved works, Curiosity, by Eugen von Blaas, as well as a recent acquisition of a painting by Miranda Parkes, who was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage in 2009.

TESLA STUDIOS – the Mark Lampe Years
26 March – 17 July, 2011  

Mark Lampe opened the doors of the Tesla Studios in 1908 in Wanganui and ran a prosperous photography business until his retirement in 1955. The name Tesla Studios is still well-known throughout New Zealand and the name of Lampe (pronounced Lampey) is associated with its success and longevity.

This exhibition, developed by the Whanganui Regional Museum and curated by Libby Sharpe was first shown in 1999 (originally titled Lampe Light: Whanganui in the 1930s -1950s – Photographs from the camera of Mark Lampe) and provided the first opportunity for people to appreciate Mark Lampe’s significant contribution to photography. Eleven years on, the Whanganui Regional Museum have generously allowed us to borrow the works selected for that exhibition for another viewing here at the Sarjeant. We intend this to be the first in a series of exhibitions that will look at the work of photographers who have made a significant contribution to capturing Wanganui’s important social and architectural history.

The photographs in the exhibitionconcentrate on the years of the early 1930s until 1955 and represent just a tip of the iceberg, as they were chosen from approximately 80,000 mainly cellulose acetate negatives, owned by Leigh Mitchell-Anyon Photographer Ltd.

We would like to thank the Whanganui Regional Museum for making these wonderful images of Wanganui available to a new audience at the Sarjeant Gallery. Particular thanks must be extended to curator Libby Sharpe and Leigh Mitchell-Anyon Photographer Ltd, who generously provided access to this wonderful collection and produced the high quality prints from the original negatives for the exhibition in 1999.

Nga Whetu - The Stars
4 - 26th June, 2011

To celebrate the Maori New Year/Puanga, this exhibition is an installation of colourful stars decorated by children from local kindergarten, kohanga reo, schools and other community groups.
 

Jo Pegler - Landed

Song of the Woods
26 February - 12 June, 2011

For as long as people have been producing visual imagery, the tree has been a constant. This exhibition takes its title from an unassuming photograph by an American photographer, N.S. Wooldridge, which is part of a collection of international photography acquired for the gallery by photographer Frank Denton. Many of these photographs haven’t seen the light of (in?) the gallery since their accessioning in 1925. The small selection of images that can be seen in the first bay of this exhibition is proof that this collection of photographs is one of the many facets of the gallery’s collection that has remained relatively unsung.

The analogy of the ‘woods’ can easily be applied to a collection as rich as the Sarjeant’s. There are those works that are significant and stand alone and can be viewed from many curatorial perspectives. Others are quiet, devoid of any narrative and therefore not considered; this modus operandi could relegate them to curatorial deadwood, rather than kindling. One of the challenges of any collecting institution is to try to engage these works in new conversations and bring the overlooked to light. This exhibition brings together works from the Sarjeant’s collection with new companions, some of whom may be considered uncomfortable and unlikely.

The symbolism of the tree is as ancient as human civilisation, engrained in our psyche via religion, mythology and fairytales. For some, trees are important totems inspiring worship, reverence and poetry; for others, trees simply provide the essentials of food, warmth and shelter. A screenprint by Eileen Mayo, titled The Tree, incorporates text from William Blake that sums this up: “The tree that moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”

Andrew McLeod’s large-scale painting Presence (a detail of which is on the cover of this newsletter) incorporates all we may revere and fear about the possibility of being lost in such a surreal forest. Andrea du Chatenier’s Tree of Life incorporates dismembered body parts: blackened lungs and a heart, flowers made from bone. Others, such as Bob Negrijn, Paul Johns and Johanna Pegler, depict trees as sentinels, witness to everything and nothing. The inclusion of a painting by Simon Edwards, whose work focuses on his home town of Christchurch, has taken on a new poignancy, given that many trees as well as heritage buildings are now lost as a result of the recent devastating earthquake that occurred in the city.

Ann Shelton’s diptych work Landschaft – The Bridge to Nowhere, Whanganui depicts the bridge that was built in 1936 to service the ill-fated settlement of the Mangapurua Valley. Abandoned in 1942, the valley has been cloaked again in the kind of native bush that most New Zealanders hold dear as part of our ‘clean and green’ image. However, as Peter Peryer’s photograph of a hillside dotted with tree stumps on the Banks Peninsula and Richard Lyne’s painting of a stubbled logging scene attest, vast tracts of this country have been cleared of vegetation to accommodate farming and forestry.

 Greg Donson

Curator/Public Programmes Manager

WOODWORKS FROM THE COLLECTION
23 April – 29 May, 2011

 A selection of sculptural works from the Sarjeant’s rich collection to complement the Song of the Woods exhibition.
 

LONG LIVE THE MODERN
New Zealand's New Architecture 1904-1984
9 April – 22 May, 2011

Long Live the Modern:  New Zealand's New Architecture, 1904-1984 is an exhibition curated by Bill McKay and Julia Gatley that explores New Zealand’s extant modern buildings and brings together original drawings and period books, journals and photographs, as well as new architectural models and recent photographs. The exhibition was developed by the University of Auckland, School of Architecture and Planning and toured by the Gus Fisher Gallery and is accompanied by a book published by Auckland University Press.

PETER BUSH
Hard on the Heels - Capturing the All Blacks
5 February - 8 May, 2011

Rugby photographs by New Zealander Peter Bush who is acknowledged as the best known and most accomplished photographer of rugby in the world.  For 60 years he has been documenting the All Blacks on and off the field both here and abroad.  Hard on the Heels is the first exhibition to record his long association with our national game.
 

 

DIASPORA:  PLURALITY + SINGULARITY
18 December - 27 March, 2011

This exhibition brings together the work of six very different New Zealand artists. They work in a variety of media, covering the spectrum of current art approaches and is a grouping that has its basis in an exhibition – Ultramarte – that toured venues in Spain (Valencia and Palma de Mallorca), Hong Kong and finally, Tauranga. The new configuration places drawings by Richard Lewer and sculpture by Denis O’Connor alongside the photography of Fiona Pardington, and paintings by Gretchen Albrecht, Tony Lane and James Ross. The title of the exhibition, Diaspora – Pluralism and Singularity, suggests the theme and rationale for the selection, while Peter Simpson’s finely argued catalogue essay elaborates on this very eloquently: “So different are the visual languages employed by these artists that finding valid generalizations to cover their varied practices is a bit like trying to stretch a single-sized blanket over half a dozen bodies in a king-size bed. It can’t be done. But in this very plurality of medium, mode and manner is perhaps found the common thread that connects them . . . For whatever reasons, we have by now moved well beyond both the preoccupation with the national and the internationalist reaction to it. Contemporary practice, here (as almost everywhere), is simply too variable and multifaceted to be captured by any single model.” – Peter Simpson, 2009

Emily Valentine - Pheasbin

EMILY VALENTINE: Feather Fancy
27 November - 20 March, 2011

Feather Fancy brings together a new body of work made whilst Emily Valentine was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage, from March to May of this year. Sydney-based Valentine is the first jeweller to undertake the residency, but the title ‘jeweller’ doesn’t sit comfortably with these works as she occupies a strange hinterland: a jeweller turned object maker and sculptor. Valentine trained as a jeweller at the Sydney College of Arts and worked as a costume maker, but for the last twelve years ‘feathers have been her paint’ and she has developed her own techniques and styles using them.

In 2005, Valentine made her first hybrid birdoggie, and since that time she has continued with this cross-pollination of man’s best friend and man’s best envy – an ability to fly. An extremely important aspect of Valentine’s work is that of salvage; although these creatures may seem exotic, their origins are humble. Purchased from second-hand stores as kitsch ornaments, more often than not it is the feathers of common or pest species, such as the mynah bird, that adorn the surfaces. Specimens are often sourced from road or cat kill as well as commercially purchased feathers. For the residency at Tylee Cottage, Valentine made contact with the local branch of Bird Rescue, which kindly offered her some frozen specimens they no longer had room to store.Australian curator Yolande Norris commented earlier this year: “Central to Valentine’s practice is an awareness of humankind’s double standards when it comes to the forms of life with which we share the world. The subject of animals as ‘pests’ is particularly complex. Valentine is intrigued by the notion of that which does and doesn’t belong: one considered good and the other to be eradicated.”Pheasbin is Valentine’s largest work to date. This beautiful mongrel came about after Valentine spied the receptacles for collecting ‘doggie waste’ dotted around the city. After contacting the Wanganui District Council to see if they had any they no longer required, she returned to the cottage one day to find a shiny black plastic dog in the back garden, and this was cooked up in Valentine’s studio as the genetically modified Pheasbin. The birdplane works featuring in the exhibition are a departure from the canine world. With a militant edge, these works hint at a weird world where genetic modification has gone horribly wrong.These works raise a series of very topical questions, but the delight of Valentine’s work is that the pieces can be taken at face value: they are weird and curious creatures, beautifully crafted and engaging, and in Feather Fancy they all amount to an old-style museum diorama gone disco.

JOHN ROY:  Glimmer
27 November, 2010 - 20 March, 2011

Glimmer was created by Tauranga-based ceramic artist John Roy and was first installed at the Tauranga Art Gallery in 2009. The wall installation is made up of fifty-one ceramic rodent heads, each virtually identical in its physical shape. However, each form is individual in its decoration. Each of the heads juts out from the flat wall, like a trophy. A rodent is a most unlikely candidate for a trophy and Roy likes the play on what is usually seen as a pest versus a prize. The irony is endorsed with the large number of heads included here and also the fact that they are invading an historic gallery. In proposing this work to the Sarjeant, Roy was interested in the notion of the installation occupying an unlikely space, here the installation spreads like a virus, half in the gallery space, and half over the thoroughfare of entry and exit to the gallery.

More often that not, ceramics are displayed on plinths, but here Roy uses the wall as his flat surface, meaning the works hang like paintings. This then raises the question of the status of clay work being a craft and not high art, as painting is viewed. The large number of rodent heads, all the same in shape, also alludes to the mass production of chinaware in factories, yet these heads are individually made and each has its own personality.

For many, rodents are seen as a ‘glimmer’ out of the corner of one’s eye as they scurry about their business. Some of the rodents have sparkly jewels as part of their decoration, making them ‘glimmer’ in a bling-like manner, unlike their real counterparts. Two of the rodents of this installation have escaped elsewhere in the gallery, so look out for them as you move around the building.

John Roy was born in 1972 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Ceramics) from the Whanganui Polytechnic in 1997. His work is held in private collections as well as the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Tauranga Art Gallery. He is represented by Masterworks Gallery in Auckland and the Mary Newton Gallery in Wellington. From February to April, 2011, he will be artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage. 

LEGACY:  The Norrie Collection and other works from Government House
18 December, 2010 - 13 February, 2011

The Sarjeant Gallery is fortunate to be able to provide an opportunity for visitors to view some rarely seen royal portraits that are normally housed in Government House, Wellington. The collection was shown earlier this year at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington and will also travel to Gisborne, early next year. After this, the works will be returned to Wellington, where they will be reinstated at a newly refurbished Government House that will open in April, 2011.

The royal portraits in this exhibition were gifted to Government House in Wellington in 1957 by Sir Willoughby Norrie, Governor General of New Zealand from 1952–57. As well as this gift of royal portraits, he also donated other significant works to the Auckland Art Gallery and to private institutions. The royal portraits have been displayed on the walls of Government House and have only once before been seen in public, at an Auckland exhibition in 1955. 

Avenal McKinnon, Director of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, comments: “While New Zealand has moved towards greater independence and our own identity, these portraits remind us of the active role portraiture played in governance and citizenship. They also provide a certainty of vision in an age now dominated by photographic and video images, when one impression is constantly qualified by another”.

As a strong follower of tradition and ritual, Sir Willoughby (later Lord) Norrie’s commitment to provide a sequence of painted portraits of British royalty for Government House was reinforced by his holding office here during the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and much of his collection dates from purchases in London around that time.

Portraits in this exhibition include those of Queen Elizabeth 1, Mary Tudor, Henrietta Maria and Queen Victoria, King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, King James II, and many others from significant schools of the time. The exhibition was curated by Dr Erin Griffey, from the department of Art History at Auckland University.

ARETA WILKINSON:  Waka Huia
27 November, 2010 - 23 January, 2011

Waka Huia contributes towards my personal investigation of ‘Jewellery as Pepeha’, this makers search for a craft methodology unique to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Contemporary jewellery is an international applied art genre that self-consciously investigates the wearable object with the body as site and related contexts. My personal practice has developed as an exploration of tūrangawaewae and sense of place, an ongoing response to lived experience in Te Waipounamu/Aotearoa New Zealand.

Andrew Ross - The Mutton Club, Taupo Quay

ROUND AND ABOUT WANGANUI: 72 Photographic Studies by Andrew Ross
18 September- 12 December, 2010

WHEREVER YOU LIVE, there are always places that intrigue, where, if you had thetime, you'd like to look, see what's down the alley, on the upper floor, on the other side and behind the door.  Andrew Ross is an artist who sensitively seeks out those places and finds the way in.

Until recently, this building and the adjacent swiming baths were earmarked for demolition, hence Ross's desire to photograph the site.  As with all of his photographs, this is a beautiful study of light, with the line of coloured lightbulbs spanning the street suggesting vestiges of a street party long since over.  An interior shot shows a row of hooks that would have once held the coats of ladies attending dances in the hall.

Ross isn't just interested in photographing places that were once occupied, he is very much interested in talking to the people who are still there or who were there, who can tell their stories.  Ross is as much a social historian and archivist as he is a photographer, and the people he documents are those whom he is genuinely interested in getting to know.  Ross doesn't merely photograph his subjects and then leave the building; he stays in contact.  The photographs in the exhibition are extraordinary studies of light - quiet, unassuming, grungy beauty - and are evidence of  a photographer who has an ability to listen as well as look.

 
Anne Verdcourt, Wartime Wendy

ANN VERDCOURT: CERAMICS - A SURVEY                                
18 September - 5 December, 2010

Ann Verdcourt is one of New Zealand's most innovative and dedicated ceramic artists.  This exhibition surveys for the first time work spanning three decades of Verdourt's career, from 1980 to 2009.

Born in 1934 in Luton, England, Verdcourt's early life was coloured by the experiences of childhood in World War II and growing up in a nurturing family who were supportive of her creative endeavours.  Study at Luton and Hornsey schools of art, from 1948 to 1955, provided a rigorous practical, technical and art historical education.  Visits to galleries and museums in England and Europe were regular occurences in the Verdcourt household, meaning that many of the artists that Verdcourt has referenced throughout her career have been etched in her memory bank for a long time.  In 1965, Verdcourt and her husband, ceramic artist John Lawrence, and their two children emigrated to New Zealand, first settling in Paihiatua and in 1970 moving to Dannevirke, where they are still based.  New Zealand provided very different cultural and social experiences to those they had left behind.  Raising two children, making financial ends meet and running a rambling hosue and section limited Verdcourt's ability to actively pursue her own practice.  Ceramics that came from the household during that early time were largely made to satisfy the then buoyant market for domestic ceramics.  From the early 1980s, Verdcourt had the time and opportunity to develop her move sculptural work, which soon began to attract interest from public galleries in the lower North Island.  This exhibition considers her work through three themes:  conversations, still life and play.  Verdcourt consistently produces lively and engaging works that encourage us to consider the possibilities of the medium of ceramics.  This exhibition was developed in partnership with Te Manawa Museums Trust, Palmerston North, and is accompanied by a 64 page, full-colour catalogue that has been published with the generous support of Creative New Zealand.  The publication features essays from curators Greg Donson and Nicola Jennings, as well as guest essays from Gregory O'Brien, Roger Blackley and Janne Land, plus an interview between Ann Verdcourt and Margaret Taylor.

FEATHERED FRIENDS
28 October - 14 November, 2010

This exhibition features artwork produced by students from eight Wanganui primary schools. Each class visited the gallery to participate in a practical workshop with the Sarjeant Gallery education officers. Looking at the theme of birds, each of the workshops involved the students viewing works depicting birds from the gallery’s Permanent Collection. The examples included wooden sculpture, printmaking, drawing and photography. Using these works as inspiration, the children then produced their own bird-themed artwork.






Colour - Installation at the Sarjeant

COLOUR                               
19 June - 14 November, 2010

Colour is an exhibition drawn from the collections of the Sarjeant Gallery and the Whanganui Regional Museum.  From the monochrome to the many-coloured, this exhibition spans two collections and two venues and puts colour on display through a diverse array of artworks and objects. 

Colours describe how something looks, but they also have cultural meanings. In putting this exhibition together we have tried to think of colour broadly: as appearance and as abstract associations. Every now and then, visitors will find an object that is a different colour from the rest of the objects in that section. This isn’t a mistake but a way of pointing out the different dimensions that colours have in human societies.

An example of this is an artificial limb, a particularly brutal prosthetic, more machine than man, yet it symbolizes pink through a connection to the body, to cosmetics. ‘In the pink’ is a state of mind, of wholeness, and this artificial leg is a device for making whole – correcting – what has been lost, just as pink blush can mimic the healthy flush of blood under the skin – what is called a healthy glow.

The exhibition has allowed us to bring together a diverse range of artworks and objects that have not been seen together before, including a number of items that have local relevance, including a port light that was sited on the banks of the Whanganui River, a weighty door from the Rutland Stockade that was situated in Queens’s Park and an impressive but menacing black x-ray machine.

There are fifty-seven works featured by fifty-one artists from the Sarjeant’s collection. They include Robert McLeod, Philip Clairmont, Paratene Matchitt, Don Driver and Gretchen Albrecht and Yvonne Todd, to name a few.

The exhibition features eleven colours. At the Sarjeant you’ll find grey, pink, purple, brown and orange, while at the Whanganui Regional Museum you’ll see black, red, yellow, blue, green and white.

By mixing artworks and objects – from the thickly-painted surface of an oil on canvas to the plush fur of a stuffed animal – this exhibition looks at how colour shapes our response to the environment, to each other and to the things that surround us in our lives.

Greg Donson and Damian Skinner, curators.

Deb Halliday, Mother Science. Hand-sewn sculpture

PATILLO SCHOLARSHIP 2010
Until 24th October, 2010

Wellington company pattillo offers this generous scholarship of $7500 for developing artists from Whanganui UCOL’s Quay School of the Arts and has given a commitment to fund it for ten years. Now in its fourth year, the scholarship continues to go from strength to strength. The brief for participating artists is to create a work that reflects the idea of “sculpting chaos”. The recipient of this year’s scholarship is third-year student Deborah Halliday. Her winning work, along with those of the other nineteen students, is currently on display at the gallery. 

Lyndsay Patterson, Murrine Oriental

WANGANUI GLASS 2010
7 August - 3 October, 2010

Since the establishment of a glass department at the Wanganui Regional Polytechnic in 1987, Wanganui has become known as a centre of excellence for glass practice. In 2006, the Ministry of Social Development provided Creative Communities funding for a glass facilitator to support and build the glass sector in Wanganui. One successful initiative has been the establishment of a Festival of Glass, with this year being the fifth. Organisation of this year’s festival, which will run from 18 September–3 October, has been taken up by the Wanganui Glass Group.  

As part of this year’s festival, the Sarjeant Gallery is pleased to present a selection of work by glass artists who are currently living and working in Wanganui or who are graduates of the glass programme in Wanganui. The varied selection of work is a true reflection of the diversity of glass as a medium and is testament to why glass has gained in popularity in recent years. The exhibition includes the work of recent graduates and well-established practitioners, all of whom explore the medium in challenging and engaging ways.

Fiona Amundsen, Looking towards Sorazaya Bridge, Hiroshima

FIONA AMUNDSEN:  The First City in History
7 August - 3 October, 2010

The First City in History is the most recent body of work from Auckland-based artist Fiona Amundsen. With a background in social anthropology, Amundsen’s practice investigates how photography operates on social and cultural levels. This suite of seven photographs features the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the first city in history subjected to nuclear warfare when it was bombed by the United States of America on 6 August, 1945, during World War II. Amundsen comments: “The First City in History is a sustained photographic investigation into the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the Genbaku Dome, the Aioi Bridge and the surrounding walkways. This project seeks to explore the disparity between the uniquely subjective experiences of being in such historically loaded sites and their representation through photography. This project also plays on the socio-cultural understanding of both site and photography, the former linked to how photographs actually do reveal something about what they depict, while the latter is grounded in the notion that space itself is always ‘cultural’. Subsequently, what these photographs disclose has more to do with the invisible structures that make up a city but can’t necessarily be seen in a photograph – things like politics, economics, the social and cultural profiles of a city, its history, all of which influence how a city ends up looking. Ultimately, the core ideas of this project involve an investigation into how socio-cultural historical narratives are preserved and then re-enacted through this city’s public spaces.”

The opening of the exhibition coincided with the 65^th anniversary of the bombing. The exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of the Asia NZ Foundation, AUT Auckland University of Technology and NZJEP (New Zealand-Japan Exchange Programme).

2010 Carey Smith & Co Whanganui Arts Review
10 July – 5 September, 2010

With more than 400 people attending the opening of this years Arts Review, it’s no surprise that this annual exhibition is a highlight of our programme. Generously sponsored by local chartered accountancy firm Carey Smith & Co. Ltd, who provide sponsorship for the five main prizes, the exhibition is open to any artist living in the Whanganui region. Now in its twenty-second year, 2010 offers visitors an opportunity to view a huge range of work in a variety of media from a wide spectrum of artists.

This year, 144 artists submitted work and from these 98 works were selected for the exhibition by Greg Donson, Curator/Public Programmes Manager at the Sarjeant, Nicola Jennings, Curator and Team Leader Art at Te Manawa, and Julian Priest, artist/co-founder of the Green Bench Project Room. This year’s judge was Helen Telford, Assistant Director of the Govett Brewster Art Gallery.

The prizes were awarded to the following recipients: Carey Smith & Co. Ltd  $1000 Open Award to Catherine Macdonald; Carey Smith & Co, Ltd $500 Student Award to E.C. McNamara, Carey Smith & Co. Ltd $250 Highly Commended Awards (x3) to Fiona McGowan, Kaye Wooding and Kirk Nicholls.

Merit awards received by Andre Bronnimann, J.K. Russ, Tom Turner, Amy Fitzgerald, Sue James, Bonnie Wroe and Stacey Hildreth were generously sponsored by River City Picture Framers Ltd, Jolt Coffee House, Central City Pharmacy, Ceramic Lounge, Flying Fox and Members of the Sarjeant Gallery.

Helen Telford comments on Catherine Macdonald's open award winning work, A Place where things Really Happen: "This evocative work consists of a number of drawings – of fragments of things seen and an accompanying artist’s book. This is my second encounter with Catherine’s work and as thrilling as the first. In the context of Whanganui and the Sarjeant, the drawings bring to mind Joanna Paul. The everyday things, the things glimpsed, the empty white space leaving imagination to roam. Joanna also worked with words, making books, poetry, beauty even. Catherine’s texts are not that – they are of a grittier, grungier, fictional everyday – but one we can feel to be true. I was also thrilled that drawing won out at the end of the day. It is a modest yet deeply expressive medium that can easily be overlooked and under-rated. Congratulations Catherine.“

The gallery would like to congratulate all the award-winning artists and all those who entered the exhibition, as well as Helen Telford for judging this year’s exhibition in such a considered and engaging manner. We would also like to thank Carey Smith & Co. Ltd, Chartered Accountants, and the above-listed local businesses for their ongoing support of this community exhibition.

 
Rodney Fumpston, Fernbook, 1991

RODNEY FUMPSTON:  Prints
10 July - 29 August, 2010

The Sarjeant Gallery’s association with artist Rodney Fumpston stretches back to the early 1980s, when the gallery mounted a survey exhibition of Fumpston’s work. In 2004, the gallery mounted a comprehensive survey covering thirty years of the artist’s practice. Subsequently, Rodney generously gifted the entire body of work to the Sarjeant’s permanent collection. Six years on, we have an opportunity to reflect on this extraordinary gift and offer visitors a chance to view a small selection of works that cover Fumpston’s prolific output.

EDITH COLLIER
A celebration of the 125th anniversary of the artist's birth
19 June -1 August, 2010

Edith Collier is undoubtedly the most significant painter to have been born in Wanganui. From 1912 to 1921 she spent time in England studying at art school and with distinguished artists such as Frances Hodgkins and Margaret Preston. Since 1985, the Sarjeant Gallery has been fortunate to be the caretakers of her significant artistic output. This exhibition celebrates the 125th anniversary of the artist's birth and features work spanning the breadth of her career.

FLORIFEROUS
Flowers gathered from the Sarjeant's collection and beyond
3 April - 23 May, 2010

This exhibition brings together a broad range of works featuring floral subject matter, spanning from beautiful detailed 19th century botanical drawings through to contemporary painting and photography.  Primarily drawn from the Sarjeant's rich collection, the exhibition is supplemented with a small number of loaned works.
 
 

KAY WALSH - When Time Slides by Slowly
27 March - 23 May, 2010 

Kay Walsh arrived in Wanganui in December 2009 to undertake a three-month residency at Tylee Cottage.  Wanganui-born and currently London-based, Walsh has been overseas for more than twenty years.  Walsh combines video, photography, sound and text to draw attention to the detail found within the commonplace - the everyday.


 

SCOTT EADY: Lost at the Bottom of the World
13 March - 23 May, 2010 

Scott Eady has, for the last decade, been making large-scale sculptural works with sardonic wit. These have included a room-sized wooden chainsaw, a lacquered pink pick-up truck and a life-sized ‘My Little Pony’ called Dahlia.

A boat called Hannah is the first object to be encountered on entering this exhibition. At first glance, it looks just like any ordinary, yet elegant, double-scull rowing boat (for those who know their boats), but closer inspection reveals something not quite right with its form. It is not a functional boat – at least, not suitable for competitive rowing. The boat has two bows. The rigging is set up so that the rowers are in opposition to one another, face to face. To stroke in unison would rock the boat back and forward like the pendulum of a metronome or an amphisbaena (serpent with two heads), resulting, also, in going nowhere.

The boat was fabricated in China to Eady’s specifications and shipped to New Zealand. Having never touched the water, the boat is displayed in the gallery, like a disabled arachnid, supported by stands and slings. What is normally a functional machine for transportation becomes useless and is transformed into an elegant sculptural object.

Similarly, the work Money Train is another work that goes nowhere: a small N Scale train set cast from now-obsolete 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c nickel coins. Two engines sit back to back and are linked to carriages that form a full circle.

Ideas of symmetry, opposition and place in the world are key in this body of work. The title of the exhibition can be seen as a musing on Eady’s current place of residence, Dunedin. At the other end of the country from where Eady was born – Auckland – Dunedin certainly does feel like the bottom of the world to North Island dwellers. Eady comments: “This exhibition is an investigation of the push and pull between home and elsewhere, between right and wrong places, of rural nostalgia and the realities of urban living.”

The idea of north and south is also reflected in the two photographs, God’s Green Hair and God’s Greener Hair, depicting ready-lawn grass, grown commercially at two sites at opposite ends of the country. The imported seed is green from excessive irrigation while awaiting harvest time, when it will be uplifted and transplanted to a new, probably urban, residential or commercial development. In a wider sense, Eady is also alluding to the phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side”, but what’s on the other side and will it be any better, or just a variation on a theme?

As with many of Eady’s works, the inflatable cloud work, Trade Wind, has a multiplicity of readings. Its title refers to the trade winds that guided pre-European and European settlers to New Zealand – the land of the long white cloud. The forms of the clouds are like the classic cumulus clouds floating in the background of children’s drawings. The “clouds” were also made in China, and when Eady initially started work on them, in 2008, the Chinese were busy shooting missiles into clouds to try and improve weather prospects for the Beijing Olympics. 
   
 

I GO WHERE THE PARTY TAKES ME
(Until 2 May, 2010)

This exhibition features the work of nine documentary-style Wanganui-based photographers from differing generations and ethnicities, along with the Whanganui School of Design Pivot magazine crew, coming together to show their images of a diverse community at play.
 

Edith Collier, Village by the Sea

SALT AIR - Coastal Life, by Edith Collier
24 October, 2009 - 2 May, 2010
A large number of key works in the Edith marion Collier Loan Collection were completed between 1914 and 1921, when she studied and worked with the Australian artist Margaret MacPherson in Bonmahon, Ireland, and with Frances Hodgkins in St Ives, Cornwall. The selection shown in this exhibition depicts the coastal life of these communities, as well as that of Kawhia in the late 1920s. 

A master printmaker, arguably one of the country's finest, Rodney has been dedicated to the medium since he first fell in love with it as a fine arts student at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University.  Overseas travel has inspired much of his work.  From England, Egypt, the Pacific and New Zealand this small selection of works provides an overview of Rodney's travels.  Bright and breezy to quiet and intimate, the selection provides a rich tapesty of printmaking techniques and varied themes.  

As with much of the Sarjeant Gallery's collection, we often have the generosity of the artists and collectors to be extremely thankful for, and this exhibition is one such example.
 

Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams - Quill, 2009

LOOKING GLASS - Reflecting Ideas
(2 December, 2009 - 14 March, 2010 by popular demand extended to 24 March, 2010)

21 New Zealand Glass Artists:  Claudia Borella, Hannah Bremner, Lee Brogan, Emma Camden, Christine Cathie, Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams, Evelyn Dunstan, Shona Firman, Robyn Irwin, Luke Jacomb, Merryn Jones, Trudie Kroef, Lou Pendergrast-Mathieson, Raewyn Roberts, Ann Robinson, Colleen Ryan Priest, Ben Sablerolle, Liz Sharek, Jenny Smith, David Traub, Ben Young.

Looking Glass: reflecting ideas is the Sarjeant Gallery’s first foray into a large scale exhibition featuring the work of New Zealand glass artists. In 2002 the Sarjeant hosted The Cast, this was followed in 2004 by Southern Exposure. Both of these exhibitions featured a range of practitioners and were enormously popular with gallery visitors. Initiated by people within the glass fraternity, both looked at what was happening there and then.

When considering the inclusion of a glass exhibition within our programme, the gallery wanted to do more than simply offer a survey of what was happening in New Zealand glass in 2009. We wanted to drill down deeper and not just look at what was ‘new’, but also how each of the artists had reached that point.The 21 New Zealand glass artists included in the exhibition were selected from many submissions responding to a brief which invited proposals for a group of three works that would show the scope and development of an idea. We asked artists to ‘reflect on’ the ways in which their idea had evolved, and show its relationship to their interest in glass and the process of making their work. In some cases that development has taken place over a considerable time; in others, one of the objects might not be a work, but something that had provided the source of their idea.The intent of Looking Glass is to offer some insights that might lengthen our ‘look’, reveal some of those insightful and often moving stories and enable us to reflect on them further.The exhibition and accompanying publication wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of Creative NZ and sponsorship from Doyle & Associates. 

Greg Donson and Grace Cochrane, curators.

 
Niki Hastings-McFall, Crucifixion, 2009

SECONDLIFE - Five Artist Projects (7 November–28 February, 2010)

Against a backdrop of an overheating planet and rapidly depleting resources, Eve Armstrong, Judy Darragh, Niki Hastings-McFall, Joanna Langford and Peter Madden respond to the call to live more responsibly, ‘upcycling’ everyday materials and ready-made objects (objets trouvés), giving them a ‘second life’ as works of art, creating works of great beauty and imagination from cheap, humble materials.  Second Life is a travelling exhibition from Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, Porirua.
 

 

  
Colin McCahon (New Zealand, b. 1919, d. 1987) Portrait of Gordon H. Brown 1968

90 YEARS, 90 WORKS - Celebrating the Gallery’s 90th Anniversary
(Finished 14th February 2010)

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Sarjeant Gallery opening. Without the generous bequest of Henry Sarjeant, who died in 1912, Wanganui would not have such a fine public gallery or such a rich and diverse collection, which now numbers more than 6000 items. The gallery’s collection began some 18 years prior to the gallery opening in 1919, when Henry and his wife Ellen Stewart – founding members of the Wanganui Arts and Crafts Society, an organisation established in 1901 – began acquiring works of art for a future gallery. Sarjeant stated in his will . . .

It is my desire that works of art shall be purchased or acquired on account of their intrinsic value as works of High Art only and not because they are specimens of local or colonial art, so that the said gallery shall be furnished with Works of the Highest Art in all its branches as a means of inspiration for ourselves and those who come after us.

That’s the extraordinary thing about philanthropy, an inherent trust in “those who come after us”. Over the last ninety years, the gallery has acquired a rich and diverse range of works, ranging from 16th Century European works to contemporary New Zealand photography. The collection has been amassed through many generous gifts, acquisitions and works placed on loan to the gallery, all of them telling a multiplicity of stories, individually and collectively.

In 2009, how do we reflect the diversity of the Sarjeant’s collection on its 90th anniversary? One way to do that would have been to deliver an exhibition of ninety works in chronological order, but with nearly a century’s worth of record keeping, finding a work from every year from 1919 to 2009 wouldn’t have been an easy task, and, for that matter, neither would it be a true reflection of the diversity of the collection. 

The Sarjeant Gallery has a full-time staff of nine, and although we all have very specific roles within the gallery’s operation, in essence we are all custodians of the gallery and its collection. Collectively, the current staff have 116 years of institutional experience. During our time at the gallery, we have all handled, walked past, frequently re-visited many familiar friends and found new ones in new acquisitions or discovered others – concealed in racks and plan drawers, awaiting their time on the gallery wall. What better way then to celebrate the collection than to invite each of the nine full-time staff to select 10 works from the collection on a theme of their choice. The resulting exhibition, on display in two areas of the gallery, is a diverse one, which includes the first work acquired for the gallery and the most recent, acquired in the last month. Whether you are a frequent visitor to the gallery or visiting from further afield, we hope you enjoy this varied and eclectic show and join with the staff in saying thank you to Henry Sarjeant for having the vision to make this place possible.

Greg Donson
Curator/Public Programmes Manager

THE 2009 CAREY SMITH & CO LTD - CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS WHANGANUI ARTS REVIEW
(26 September - 29 November, 2009)

The annual Arts Review is an excellent opportunity to display work from our local region to a diverse national and international audience. Moreover, it’s also a good chance for practicing artists to see what others are doing and to be able to view their own work in a broader context. This year marks another Arts Review filled with artistic flair and social comment, which augurs well for further rich participation in the years to come.
 

BILL CULBERT: 180° x 2 Whanganui
(1 August - 29 November, 2009)

A dome installation by Bill Culbert featuring flurorescent tubes suspended in the dome and eight large scale photographs of local sites. Culbert is one of New Zealand's most senior and respected artists who divides his time between London and France. This is the only work, for a museum, that Culbert will be completing while he is New Zealand for the launch of the monograph Bill Culbert: Making Light Work by Ian Wedde and published by Auckland University Press in August.

Entering the Sarjeant Gallery is a special occasion at all times. The gallery’s architecture, an uncommon mixture of Neo-Classicism and early Twentieth Century design, provides the visitor with an additional experience to that which one normally hopes for in an art gallery – the art. Culbert’s installation, within this space, is an exploration of place, spatial reference and harmonies of theory and concrete reality. It is a re-telling of his experience and understanding of Wanganui, firmly and critically placed within the Dome area, which acts as the work’s  frame and context.

Culbert came to Wanganui in late 2008 in order to consider creating a work for the Sarjeant Gallery. While in town for on three days or so, he was struck by images of the commonplace which, when interpreted through his eyes, become extraordinary – vernacular architecture, tyre marks and architectural debris in salvage yards. Wanganui of course has much more to offer to an attuned observer. In tandem with the built environment lies the intangible and metaphysical experience of the town’s location, amplified by the Whanganui River. Culbert was immediately receptive to the potency of this natural feature in exactly the same manner as local Māori have always been. He was drawn to the immense force of the awa as it passed by the North Mole and entered the Tasman Sea connecting Wanganui with the world. One cannot help but be affected by the strength of this natural feature and indeed the numinous energy which emanates from it. 

It is one of the characteristics of Culbert’s work that, as an artist, he seems to be ‘plugged in’ to the power and vigour of places and objects. This kind of understanding, of the nature of things, imbues his installations with a depth greater than their sole sculptural appeal. In truth, what Culbert achieves is a point of interaction between the viewer and his own curiosity about a given area or thing. Throughout 180^o x 2 Whanganui Bill Culbert acts as a guide. In his pictures of Wanganui scenes, in his placement of fluorescent light tubing, he gives us prompts and asks us, in our mind’s eye, to take a journey to the places he’s found and to experience the emotions and sensations he discovered during his Wanganui expedition. These experiences can only be had here. This tour, these sights, can only begin within the Sarjeant Gallery’s elegantly proportioned central Dome.

Generously sponsored by: 

WANGANUI GLASS 2009
(12 September - 22 November, 2009)

As part of this year’s glass festival, the Sarjeant Gallery is pleased to present a selection of work by glass artists who are currently living and working in Wanganui. The exhibition includes the work of students, recent graduates and well-established practitioners, all of whom explore the medium in challenging and engaging ways.

Since the establishment of a glass department at the Wanganui Regional Polytechnic in 1987, Wanganui has become known as a centre of excellence for glass practice. In 2006, the Ministry of Social Development provided Creative Communities funding for a glass facilitator to support and build the glass sector in Wanganui. One successful initiative has been the establishment of a Festival of Glass, with this year being the fourth. The two-week festival will run from 19 September to 4 October.

As part of this year’s festival, the Sarjeant Gallery is pleased to present a selection of work by glass artists who are currently living and working in Wanganui. The variety seen here is a true reflection of the diversity of glass as a medium and is testament to why it has gained in popularity in recent years. The exhibition includes the work of students, recent graduates and well-established practitioners, all of whom explore the medium in challenging and engaging ways.

Paul Rayner, Untitled (Whanganui Landscape)

RIVER WEEK
(1 November–8 November, 2009)

As part of this years River Week celebrations we have put together a small selection of 10 works from the Sarjeant’s permanent collection which focus on the Whanganui river. This is in the education space.

Nude in Blue Armchair (1972) by Michael Smither. 
Collection of the Sarjeant Gallery, donated by Jenny Gibbs

BARE: Nudes from the collection
(Finished 4 October, 2009)

This exhibition features a range of works by Edith Collier and a selection of historical and contemporary work drawn from the permanent collection including drawing, painting and photography.

Ring Her Name with Roses, Jeffrey Harris 

SURFACE TENSION
(15 August - 25 October, 2009)

A selection of uneasy works from the Permanent Collection, including sculptural work by Warren Viscoe, Paratene Matchitt and Llew Summers, paintings by Bill Hammond, Tony Fomison, Jeffrey Harris and a selection of prints and drawings.

19 November to 29 January

Born in Stratford in 1938, Graham Percy studied at Elam School of Fine Arts before embarking on a career as an illustrator/designer/artist and producing pivotal works for the New Zealand School Journal as well as designing book covers and award-winning Crown Lynn crockery. Percy left this country in the mid-1960s and became a hugely respected artist/illustrator/typographer overseas, while at the same time producing a remarkable body of his own independent art.

Percy illustrated over 100 children's books, including Gerald Durrell’s Fantastic Flying Journey, and editions of Wind in the Willows, Aesop’s Fables and Arabian Nights. As well as undertaking illustrations and art design for film and television projects such as Hugo the Hippo (1973) and Ways of Seeing (1972).

During the last decade of his life Percy put commissioned work behind him and focused on his own drawings, in many of these late images he returns to his childhood, not only imagining himself as a child, but also engaging imaginatively with the toy train-set, the tin motorcyclist, dolls and a myriad of other objects. Percy also spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be an artist – particularly a New Zealand artist, a Kiwi, working in Great Britain. He lived and worked in London until his death in 2008.

This exhibition has been developed by Gregory O’Brien in partnership with Exhibition Services Tours in association with City Gallery Wellington and Gus Fisher Gallery, The University of Auckland. It is also accompanied by a new publication written by Gregory O’Brien and published by Auckland University Press (AUP).

In the large colour lithographs of Titokowaru’s Dilemma, figures of similar style and clarity are set into New Zealand landscapes based on colonial paintings and photographs.

EDITH COLLIER:  Selected Irish Works

A large number of Edith Collier’s (1885–1964) key works were completed during time she spent studying and working with the Australian artist Margaret MacPherson, in Bonmahon, Ireland in 1914 and 1915. Filmmaker Michael Heath, the man behind the film Edith Collier: A Light among Shadows, is working on a new film relating to this time in Ireland. To tie in with the film crew’s visit to the Sarjeant Gallery this show has been curated to highlight the importance of Ireland to Collier’s development as a painter. In her own words Bonmahon was: 'A grand place for painting. Models of all sorts, seascapes and landscape without going far'.

Edith was encouraged by Macpherson to use the people of Bonmahon as her most significant subject matter. Her family also eagerly awaited new insights into the life and people of the village. Edith’s sister Dorothy reported on how Peasant Woman of Bonmahon was received in Wanganui: ‘Dad likes your Irish Biddy very much, quite proud of you . . .’ In this work, as with other portraits completed in Bonmahon, Edith takes the traditional if not clichéd nineteenth-century theme of the worthy but impoverished peasant, and applies to it a new Post-Impressionist vision. Edith was also taken with the beauty of the cottages of Bonmahon and depicted a number of them, examples of which can be seen in this exhibition.

16 June - 16 September

Richard Parker:  Master of Craft surveys the career and practice of this defining figure within New Zealand ceramics, with works loaned from leading public and private collections around the country. The curator, Richard Fahey, says "Parker had his own picture of what a pot should look like", and that although Parker's practice is grounded within the traditions of studio ceramics, "As an artist, his innovative approach seeks to redefine for us new ways we may understand the decorative object."

At a pivotal moment in his career Richard Parker abandoned the known in terms of how to make a pot and what it should look like and developed his own unique ceramics vocabulary. This singular vision has sustained his career for over 30 years and produced works that are uniquely recognisable. Parker is noted for a variety of distinctive decorative forms frequently embellished with dashes, dots and dribbles in luscious glazes of red and green, black and cream, and his signature green and gold. 

Accompanying the exhibition is a lavishly illustrated 120 page publication, written by Richard Fahey, which is available at the Gallery shop.