22 December 2009

GALLERY HIGHLIGHTS: 23 DECEMBER - 5 JANUARY

We have a great range of exhibitions and activities to suit all ages and interests over the Christmas season. Come along on a Wednesday night to enjoy our Christmas films in the auditorium. Bring the kids to our Summer Sand Art classes where they can transform sand into beautiful, colourful works of art to take home. Or perhaps they'd like to explore Brought to Light with a fun drawing activity and pay a visit to the interactive Blue Planet. The Gallery is open every day except Christmas day.

Wed 23 Christmas Film: Joyeux Noël

6pm / Philip Carter Family Auditorium / 115mins / M / free

A true story of the troops whose lives were changed on Christmas Eve 1914, when they put down their weapons and celebrated Christmas together.

Sponsored by The Press

Wed 30 Holiday Film: The Philadelphia Story

6pm / Philip Carter Family Auditorium / 107 mins / PG / free

This Academy Award-winning romantic comedy sees trio of lovers Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant mixed up in an impending wedding.

Sponsored by The Press

Summer School Holiday Events

Explore & Draw

27 December - 24 January / 10am-4pm / collect activity sheet from the front desk / free

Explore the new collection display Brought to Light with this fun activity. Enter the draw to win a set of art materials.

Summer Sand Art

5-23 January / weekdays only / 10am-11.30 or 1-2.30pm / education centre / $5 / bookings tel: (03) 941 7342 or (03) 941 7382

Transform sand into beautiful, colourful works of art by creating your own super sand picture to take home. Wear your old clothes. Materials supplied.

Current Exhibitions

Barry Clarke Wide bangle and symbols 2009. Sterling silver and 18ct gold. Courtesy of the artist and Form Gallery

Talisman

Until 14 February

Talismans are found in many cultures throughout the world. In this exhibition twelve contemporary New Zealand jewellery artists have made new work responding to the enduring power of the talisman. Ritual, superstition and transformation, aspects often forgotten or lost in secular society, are explored.

The inclusion of twelve rare and important historic talismans from Canterbury Museum's oceanic collection highlights an exchange across times and cultures, and reinforces not only the connections between jewellery and the body, science, magic and nature, but also the idea that jewellery accrues meaning through use.

Monica Richards Gallery

Sponsored by Creative New Zealand and in partnership with Canterbury Museum

Chris Heaphy: Untitled (bleu)

Until 14 February

Screening to coincide with the exhibition Blue Planet, this video work from the Gallery's collection is of the waters of Lake Taupo, near the mouth of the Hinemaia River. Chris Heaphy has turned the rich-blue waterscape on its side to create an enigmatic image suggesting ghostly figures.

The soundtrack is a mixture of Gregorian chanting and sacred music by sixteenth-century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Tait Electronics Gallery

Ricky Swallow Ned 2009. Watercolour on paper. Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2009. Image reproduced courtesy of the artist

Ricky Swallow: Watercolours

Until 21 February

Australian artist Ricky Swallow is best known as a maker of meticulous sculptures that reinvent the still-life tradition on contemporary terms. But he is also a maker of playful and atmospheric watercolours.

Featuring more than eighty works, this exhibition surveys the full range of these 'atmospheric presentations' - from early science-fiction scenarios and still-life studies through to his recent haunting portraits of members of the Kelly Gang.

Touring Gallery C

A UQ Art Museum touring exhibition

The Vault: Neil Pardington

Until 14 March

Working behind the scenes in museums and galleries throughout New Zealand with his large-format camera, Neil Pardington reveals the hidden collection storage spaces that are normally closed to the public.

William A. Sutton and Ravenscar Galleries

A Christchurch Art Gallery Touring Exhibition

Joanna Braithwaite Little monkey 1997. Oil on canvas. Long-term loan from the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Award Collection. Reproduced courtesy of the artist

The Naked and the Nude

Until 18 April

The unclothed human figure is one of art's oldest subjects, yet it still catches attention and ignites debate.

This exhibition brings together dozens of bodies from the collection, from languid academic nudes to the fragmented bodies of recent art.

Along the way, the exhibition charts the growing tension between the nude and the naked - between works of art that idealise the body and those that try to tell it like it is.

Touring Gallery A and B

Blue Planet

Until 7 November

Blue is a feeling, a place to dream, an endless idea and the colour of our amazing planet as seen from space.

Looking at the ways artists have used the colour blue, Blue Planet celebrates imaginative art making and thinking, as well as different cultural and global perspectives.

Blue Planet is shaped with younger audiences in mind.

Burdon Family Gallery

Brought to LIght: A New View of the Collection

Open now

Almost seven years since Christchurch Art Gallery opened, the collection display has undergone a complete refreshment. Spectacularly reconfigured exhibition spaces feature a dynamic mix of new and seldom-seen works, as well as new conversations among old favourites. For any art institution charged with conserving the past, registering the present and offering suggestions for the future, the challenge to 'bring to light' is at once daunting and inspiring. Brought to Light: A New View of the Collection is our response to that challenge.