Chrystabel Aitken Butterflies in a circle 1920s. Collection of the Macmillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury
This exhibition is now closed
An overview of the much-loved Arts and Crafts movement in Canterbury from 1882.
'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'
William Morris, 1880
The British Arts and Crafts movement was a social and political movement, as much as an art movement: working and living conditions for people must improve, and each and every person should be allowed beauty in their lives. Objects designed to enrich daily existence – the home made beautiful – were at the heart of the movement.
Appropriated with enthusiasm in New Zealand, the movement gathered new characteristics, principally in terms of the motifs used, including Māori motifs, and indigenous and introduced flora and fauna. The movement here did not make the step into multiple production, and so individually hand-crafted works remained a defining characteristic of the local movement.
Canterbury, particularly the Canterbury College School of Art, became a key participant from the late nineteenth century onwards. The artists of Canterbury, both fine and applied, practiced woodcarving, modeling, art metalwork, jewellery, and illumination and illustration, emulating and developing British tastes and styles. Over the summer of 1906–7, Christchurch was the site of the largest collection of British Arts and Crafts ever seen outside Britain, displayed at the ‘New Zealand International Exhibition of Arts and Industries'. In many ways, the movement has never lost its place in the lives of Cantabrians.
Guest curated by art historian Ann Calhoun, the exhibition Simplicity & Splendour: The Canterbury Arts & Crafts Movement from 1882 displays over 130 works providing an overview of the movement in Canterbury.
Related Events
Montana Wednesday Evenings
Lecture: Wednesday 24 November 6.00pm
Ann Calhoun, art historian and guest curator presents ‘Forgotten Artists: Arts & Crafts, Canterbury Style' in association with the exhibition Simplicity and Splendour: The Canterbury Arts & Crafts Movement from 1882.
Venue: Philip Carter Family Auditorium, ground floor.
Arts and Crafts Weekend Seminar
Saturday 27 & Sunday 28 November
This two-day seminar considers the applications of art and craft designs to a wide range of activities, including architecture, interior design, metalwork, and embroidery. See Lectures page for more information.
Art Bites
Monday 22 November: Ann Calhoun talks on Chrystabel Aitken's Untitled (marigold design in a pentagon)
Wednesday 24 November: Ken Hall talks on Connie Tutton's Untitled (hand-carved chair decorated with Māori patterns)
Monday 29 November: Marilyn Rea-Menzies on Cordelia Akins's Untitled (cushion)
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Date:
19 November 2004 – 27 February 2005 -
Exhibition number:
728
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: Jewellery
Artist Profile
Lisa Walker: 0 + 0 = 0
It might be tempting to say that Lisa Walker makes jewellery out of any old thing – but it isn’t true. The eclectic objects that form her distinctive necklaces, brooches and other body-adornments are meticulously selected and shrewdly modified before they see the light of day. She salvages her materials from an unlikely cornucopia of sources – re-presenting objects such as car parts, animal skins and even kitchen utensils through the frame of body adornment’s long history. Tiny Lego hats, helmets and hairpieces – of the kind that clog vacuum cleaner nozzles in children’s bedrooms around the world – are strung on finely plaited cords like exotic beads or shells; trashy gossip magazines are lashed together to yield a breastplate befitting our celebrity-obsessed culture; dozens of oboe reeds donated by a musician friend bristle round the wearer’s neck like the teeth of some unimaginable deep sea leviathan.
Article
The pleasure of making: objects taking centre stage in the space of the art gallery
Was it serendipity that the opening of Christchurch Art Gallery's Burster Flipper Wobbler Dripper Spinner Stacker Shaker Maker coincided with that of Slip Cast, a group exhibition at the Dowse Art Museum that also focused on the pleasure that artists take in manipulating materials in the process of making art?
Notes
Aotearoa
A texture-rich new exhibition at Oxford showcases the considerable talents of six Canterbury artists.
Notes
Host a brooch
A number of Gallery staff are planning to take part in the final Host a Brooch event this weekend.
Exhibition
Talisman
Twelve New Zealand jewellery artists have made new work responding to the theme of talismans in culture. A selection of rare Oceanic talismans from Canterbury Museum are also included.
Collection
Fiona Pardington Mauria mai, tono ano
The title of this work means ‘to bring to light, to claim again’. The seven heitiki (greenstone pendants) Fiona Pardington has photographed came originally from her iwi, Kāi Tahu, in Te Waipounamu. All are now held in the collection of Auckland Museum. Traditionally worn close to the heart, heitiki are sacred fertility symbols in te ao Māori, strongly associated with whakapapa (family connections across time). Fiona not only wanted to record the physical attributes of these old and precious objects, but also to capture their more intangible qualities, such as how they speak of the past and this place, despite being stored so far away.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )