5 January 2010

GALLERY HIGHLIGHTS: 6 – 19 JANUARY

Looking for something to do over the summer holidays? There are two great films showing as part of the Gallery’s Wednesday night immerse events programme – including The Mystery of Picasso, which features a number of works since destroyed by the artist. Don’t forget to book the children into our summer school holiday programme, where they can create their own masterpieces out of sand.

The Gallery is full to the brim with great exhibitions so there’s plenty to see if you need shelter from the heat! New shows include Ricky Swallow: Watercolours, The Naked and the Nude and our refreshed collection exhibition – Brought to Light: A New View of the Collection.

Immerse

Wed 6 Art Bite: Picasso

6pm / meet at the front desk / free

Explore Pablo Picasso’s etching Minotaur Attacking an Amazon, which uses symbols from Greek mythology to evoke the political upheaval and civil disorder of 1930s Spain.

Wed 6 Film: The Mystery of Picasso

6.20pm / Philip Carter Family Auditorium / 35 mins / PG / free

Watch Picasso paintings take shape, stroke by stroke, in a documentary that provides a unique insight into his creative process. Picasso destroyed the works after filming so they exist only in this movie.

Sponsored by The Press

Ricky Swallow Ned/Mick 2007. Watercolour on paper. Proclaim Collection, Melbourne. Image reproduced courtesy of the artist

Wed 13 Art Bite: Ricky Swallow

5.15pm / meet at the front desk / free

Take a closer look at Ricky Swallow’s Ned/Mick, from the series inspired by the 1970 film Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger.

Wed 13 International Showcase:
Steven Eastwood – Filmmaker

6pm / Philip Carter Family Auditorium / 105 mins / free

Five short films by London-based film-maker Steven Eastwood, plus a trailer for his new feature Buried Land, currently in post-production. Eastwood is the co-founder of arts laboratory event OMSK and currently leads the film and video programme at the University of East London.

Sponsored by The Press

Summer School Holiday Events

Summer Sand Art

Until 23 January / weekdays only / 10–11.30am or 1–2.30pm education centre / $5 / bookings tel: (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.

Explore & Draw

Until 24 January / 10am–4pm / collect 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.

Current Exhibitions

Rei miro, Rapa Nui / Easter Island early to mid-nineteenth century. Oldman collection, Canterbury Museum E150.1124

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: 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

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

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

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

The collection display has undergone a complete refreshment. The 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.