Robert Ellis and Billy Apple

Robert Ellis visited the Gallery this week to view Billy Apple's exhibition The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else for the first time. I had earlier gone on a tour of the show with Billy where he told me about the genesis of many of the artworks. The public enjoyed meeting him as we were walking through.

During the mid 1950s, Billy attended night classes at Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts on Great North Road. In 1958, he met senior lecturer Robert Ellis and they put together an art portfolio of Billy's figurative drawings and design work which was then submitted with Robert's support to London's Royal College of Art.

In September 1959 Billy started the College's graduate Diploma course in graphic design. He was assisted by a New Zealand government bursary under the aegis of the National Art Gallery, Wellington.

During the last year we hosted Robert Ellis' Turangawaewae exhibition, which coincided with the publication of a major monograph on his work.

For a superb and long-time selection of artist photographic portraits I recommend those taken by Jim Barr and Mary Barr on their Over the Net Studio site. They have made freely available one of the best sources for artist portraits in New Zealand.

– Ron Brownson, Senior Curator, New Zealand and Pacific Art

Art, artists and AIDS in New Zealand

Isn’t it frustrating that there are few ways to easily review historic broadcasts of New Zealand’s documentary film and television? Little of this material is straightforwardly accessible. While some thematically-based vintage moving image material is available, only a small amount is published online. One reason that vintage television material is difficult to access because of the demands of copyright.

We seldom encounter exhibitions which profile panels from New Zealand’s AIDS Memorial Quilt with moving images. So, I am grateful to curator-at-large (and photographer) Gareth Watkins for assembling Thirty; firstly for Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision at Wellington. A revamped and expanded version of the show is currently showing at their Auckland office until February 27 2015.

Thirty is a type of exhibition we infrequently encounter. I have never seen before a multi-part documentary about AIDS and its effects on New Zealanders. You can download the Auckland exhibition’s catalogue here. The Auckland exhibition includes additional material on women and AIDS.

The New Zealand AIDS Memorial Quilt was initiated in 1988 and is already dedicated to loved ones who died from AIDS related illnesses. The quilt is a multi-part artwork held, on deposit, by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. As a large-scale community-based memorial the quilt consists of 128 hand-crafted panels. All the panels can be viewed online. I have been wondering if the Memorial Quilt is actually the largest scale public art project yet attempted in New Zealand. Almost all of the AIDS Memorial Quilt was created by amateur artists.

On Monday 1 December, World Aids Day, I recalled that it is three decades since the first death caused by an AIDS related condition in New Zealand. AIDS has shaken up the art world everywhere. When City Gallery Wellington showed Robert Mapplethorpe’s exhibition (9 December 1995 – 20 February 1996) most visitors were aware before they visited the show that the artist (1946–1989) died of an illness caused by the AIDS antivirus. I wondered then, as I do know, if the manner of Robert's dying made people more curious about his art?

In New Zealand, during 1988, Fiona Clark made a multi-part artwork with photo-albums that address AIDS. These five albums remain one of New Zealand's most moving artworks dedicated to the lived presence of AIDS . Fiona's images are unforgettable and were created collaboratively with the people in the photographs. Her approach as an artist was ahead of its time locally and the significance of what she achieved is not yet widely understood. Written comments were added by each person to the album pages; reading these comments is like hearing the voice of each person speaking directly to you. Unlike Mapplethorpe’s art where the effects of AIDS are only apparent in his late self-portraits, Clark’s work is upfront and direct because it is so personal. Fiona and I will be holding a public conversation about her important 1988 project early next year.

The first exhibition in Auckland to address AIDS was Implicated and Immune – Artists Responses to AIDS (18 September – 18 October 1992) curated by Louis Johnston for the Fisher Gallery (now Te Tuhi) in Pakuranga. The show included artwork by John Barnett, Jack Body, Fear Brampton, Lillian Budd, Malcolm Harrison, Lesley Kaiser, Richard Killeen, Lily Lai’ita, Stephen Lovett, Richard McWhannell and Jane Zusters. The visitor programmes for this exhibition were the first occasion when local artists and commentators spoke publicly about AIDS and contemporary art. Early in 2015 Michael Lett Gallery will reprise the Fisher Gallery exhibition and return our attention to AIDS and artist responses.

For me, the combined effect of seeing the documentary footage included in Thirty is of a documentary collage focused totally on AIDS and its effect in New Zealand. This show is in fact built into one overall multi-part documentary presenting more than 180 minutes of ‘found’ footage, almost all of which has been publicly broadcast.

I recall the conversations I had during the early 1980s with the late Bruce Burnett, Nigel Baumber, Kerry Leitch and Neil Trubuhovich. This was at a time when amost nothing was being broadcast on local television about AIDS in New Zealand. Gareth Watkins's sampler now lets us review how AIDS was later publicised by on TV. This is a show that marks the 30th anniversary of the first New Zealand death from AIDS with respect. It is tough viewing yet it reveals the imminence of AIDS as an ongoing reality.


Image credit: 
Altered Lives 2012
In the Blink of An Eye produced by Bronwen Gray, animated by Sue Lim.
Stills Collection, The New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero. 

With grateful thanks to Fiona Clark. I appreciate the assistance of Gareth Watkins and Paula Booker of The New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero, Wellington.

Research and resources

We are Auckland’s wharenui/home for authentic and meaningful engagement with art for all... 

Over the past couple of years, we’ve started working on expanding what we can offer for secondary students and their teachers, and this statement – part of the Gallery’s new purpose/values/vision statement, really resonates with much of our thinking over this time.

We are very conscious that the Gallery and its resources have a lot of possibility for use in schools, with potential applications across a broad range of subject areas. And we know from our stats that many schools aren’t currently accessing these resources – a shame for many reasons, not least because they’re owned by the very people not accessing them!

So, how do we support meaningful and authentic engagement with this institution and its resources, by students and teachers in a diverse range of subjects? Especially when our subject speciality sits most specifically in the Visual Arts and Art History?

What we know is that you can’t have authentic, meaningful engagement if you don’t know your audience well – what’s happening for them, the challenges they face, and the needs they have. If you can understand that, you’re at a point where you can potentially respond to real needs – and ideally you’ve got a great opportunity to collaborate together, and share your varied expertise in creating the best possible resources and experiences for all.

So as part of this push we undertook a small research project earlier this year. We asked 18 teachers from nine schools, in Visual Art, Art History, English and History, to tell us about their experiences and needs. We also shared specifically the types of resources we have available (for example, the art, our physical environment, our staffing expertise, resources like our research library) and asked what they imagined we could do with these that could best benefit their needs. Lots of interesting data came out of these conversations . . . and even more questions for us to follow up in the future! I’ll share more about our findings (and further questions) in the coming months, but wanted now to share a few, and what we’re doing now to start to respond in one area.

All the teachers we talked to:

• were enthusiastic about the possibilities of engaging with the Gallery and its resources in their subjects, and had lots of ideas about how meaningful connections could be made 
• needed to teach students visual analysis skills 
• said that help in doing this would be appreciated, as especially for English and History, this wasn’t something that teachers necessarily felt confident in doing 
• identified how an important focus in the classroom is in developing students’ research skills 
• found it difficult to locate accessible, reliable content that could be used to support students in this process; and in relation to art – a serious lack of information on New Zealand (and even international) art, artists and contexts 

In response to the last couple of points, we’ve started a process of developing some of this content, alongside support activities and resources that could be used or adapted for use by teachers both in the classroom and the Gallery.

For two upcoming collection shows on display at the Gallery during Term 4, 2014 and Term 1, 2015 (Age of Turmoil: Art in Germany 1900–1923 and The Social Life of Things) we’ve developed bibliographies of books, articles and websites students can access for further research. Alongside this, for Age of Turmoil, we’ve developed:

• a PDF with an overview of the show, plus detailed descriptions of a good number of the key works 
• two videos of the curator – one with him talking to a PowerPoint where he discusses the German context in the period 1900–1923, the other where he shares his curatorial process in developing the show (including photographic images of his planning process) 
• curriculum aligned worksheets tailored specifically for students of Art History, Visual Art, History and English 

We intend to continue developing resources for future shows, and we’ve got many more ideas for how we could develop these even further, but we’d love your thoughts to help with this. Feel free to let us know any feedback you have on these resources – how they work for you, how they could be improved, plus any other ideas you might have for other resources of any kind.

We’d also love to hear your feedback on the findings shared above – do these reflect your experiences? Is there more you’d like to share, or a different perspective not represented?

Feel free to respond in the comments section below, or email us at education@aucklandartgallery.govt.nz with your thoughts.

– Christa Napier-Robertson, Schools Programme Coordinator

What did the Reverend Dr John Kinder look like?

Since the exhibition Kinder's Presence opened, I've been getting asked what John Kinder looked like. There aren't many known portraits of him. The studio portrait above is in the Auckland Libraries's collection. I believe it was taken during the early to mid 1870s, when the artist was in his fifties. Kinder was apparently bald from early manhood and he wore a beard for his adult life. He apparently believed that he was one of the few Anglican clergymen to sport facial whiskers. There is certainly the look of a patriarch about him and the beard does make him seem older than he was.

This portrait is currently credited as being taken by James D Richardson by the Sir George Grey Special Collections of Auckland Libraries but it is too early for Richardson to have made it himself. It is more likely that Richardson printed it from someone else's glass negative.

Below is the portrait painting of Dr Kinder that Gottfried Lindauer was commissioned to produce by Kinder's students at St John's Theological College. Kinder is dressed formally both as a Doctor of Theology and in the formal Anglican ecclesiatical attire that he is said to have much liked. The Lindauer portrait is undated but must come from the last years of the priest's life. The look and ceremony of High Church Anglicanism fascinated the priest and is said to have alienated him from his Church cohorts at Auckland.

John Kinder was, in fact, proud of his sartorial elegance according to Professor Michael Dunn, who spoke about Kinder's personality here last week. Michael also suggested that Kinder always seemed to appear old.

I reckon that Lindauer used this late photographic portrait of John Kinder as the basis of his painting. Kinder had one of the most important private libraries in New Zealand and it is totally appropriate that he be photographed as if momentarily interrupted in his reading.

Image Credits:
attributed to John D Richardson
John Kinder
photograph
collection: Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-1289

Gottfried Lindauer
Reverend Dr John Kinder
oil on canvas
Saint John's College, Auckland
gift of the students of Dr Kinder

Unknown
John Kinder photograph
Cycloepedia of New Zealand

Tony Fomison - Archivist and Artist

My colleagues Natasha Conland and Caroline McBride have curated a solo artist exhibition which samples some of the Tony Fomison works of art in this public collection. We are fortunate in having assembled the most extensive holdings of Tony's art, which now includes the remarkable studio papers that Mrs Mary Fomison generously gifted to the Gallery.

As well, Tony Fomison: Archivist and Artist (part of Toi Aotearoa) contains two of the paintings that the Chartwell Collection gifted to the collection. This display shows just some of the brilliant archival resources that the artist's mother ensured would be made accessible to the public. Included is one of the previously unknown gouache portraits found among Tony's studio papers.

For anyone that has not seen a number of Tony Fomison paintings and drawings gathered together, or his archival material, this exhibit is an opportunity to see why Tony is such a significant 20th century New Zealand artist.

I once told some of the All Blacks that this artist would always have an ongoing reputation and public regard simply because of his unique vision. I still reckon that this is a true statement.

Tony Fomison
Beethoven 1981
oil on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Chartwell Gift Collection, 2009

Tony Fomison
The Bushman 23 January 1967
gouache
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, from the Tony Fomison Studio Papers,
gift of Mary Fomison, 2009

Gallery garage sales - then and now

Last week in our weekly staff newsletter I shared a link to this post by artist and designer Kelli Anderson, about her involvement in Martha Rosler's exhibition Meta-Monumental Garage Sale at MoMA. Anderson designed a newspaper available as part of the exhibition, which took the form of a real-life gigantic garage sale in MoMA's atrium.

One of our research librarians replied to let me know that the Gallery once held its own garage-sale-as-exhibition - exactly 37 years ago to the day!

On 5 December 1975 artist David Mealing's week-long exhibition Jumble Sale opened at the Gallery. You can read about the kerfuffle it caused, and Wystan Curnow's opinion on its overall effect, on pages 29-30 of this Gallery Quarterly.

Incidentally, David Mealing is now curator and manager of the NZ Cricket Museum in Wellington.

Staff spotlight: Scott Everson

As exhibitions designer and coordinator, Scott is part of the Collections team responsible for handling the artworks and physically delivering the exhibitions at the Gallery.

He works closely with curators, conservators, technicians and artists to develop the display and look of the gallery spaces, as well as overseeing their installation… which can involve anything from deciding where to hang a painting, to figuring out how to secure 70 live goldfish into the passenger seats of a chartered plane!

 

 

What’s the best part of your job?

The variety that comes from working with art and artists is always really exciting and inspirational. I think it's a real privilege to be part of what we do at the Gallery. Dealing with such interesting and culturally significant items while collaborating with talented people never really gets old.

 

What are the challenges?

Beside the regular practical and technical ones, working with content that many people, not just the artist, are so passionate about is a pretty delicate exercise at times. Concepts and practicality or ideal aesthetics don't always align, so establishing that level of mutual trust required to come up with a compromise that responds to everyone's needs can take a lot of work, particularly when you're working off plans and drawings rather than with the actual piece in a finished gallery space.

 

How do you want people to react when they walk into a space you’ve designed?

It really depends on the type of show and artwork we're displaying. Often the best exhibition design is one that only a few people might notice. Generally if we've got it right I'd hope visitors’ reactions and feelings will be driven by or at least align with the art on display and what the artists or curators originally wanted to communicate or provoke. Hopefully the exhibition design just helps this along a bit, enhancing the experience.

 

Out of all the shows you’ve worked on, which one(s) stand out as being your favourite?

I definitely could never pick one, that’s kind of like having to pick an all time favourite song and I'd probably come up with a different answer each day of the week. There are some like Yinka Shonibare MBE or For Keeps at the old NEW Gallery that still stand out because I'm such a fan of the elegant and slickly produced art that was in them.

 

With shows like the Julian & Josie Robertson Promised Gift and Degas to Dalí it's really humbling and memorable to be involved with such historically impressive and valuable pieces, while others like the Walters Prize or some of our large scale commissions are cool just because of the professional relationships and processes it took to deliver them.

 

We've just opened Who Shot Rock & Roll so of course that sticks out. I've always spent a lot of time going to live gigs so there's a lot of stuff in there that interests me. Gail Buckland (curator) and Roger Taberner (coordinating curator) were great to work with, giving me a lot of freedom to have some fun with the design and layout.

 

What are your interests outside of work?

I've got three old American cars that keep me entertained and poor when I'm not watching friends’ bands at some local dive bar. Actually, the only roadworthy car we've got at the moment is a ‘77 Chevy Camaro with a bit of drag racing history; it makes grocery shopping and running errands fun. Although they're gathering dust right now, I've also got a ‘51 Chevrolet I've been restoring and customising for way too long and a ‘51 Mercury Coupe which is more pile of rusty metal than vehicle at the moment.

 

Messing around with them in the garage is a good distraction if I'm getting too tied up in an exhibition, but for me there's also a real similarity with the kind of form versus function problem-solving and satisfaction I get from working on shows at the Gallery.

Jim Allen

Jim Allen's sculpture Polynesia is proving to be a popular artwork in the section of our collection exhibition Toi Aotearoa that affirms New Zealand's art from the period 1900 to 1965. It is not only because Polynesia is a rigorously realist sculpture but because the figure's ambitious scale and its sensuality. It is a beguiling sculpture which exudes a keen sense of life.

Polynesia is an important life-size sculpture from the period when Jim Allen was living in London. It was created as his submitted diploma work for the Royal College of Art. By employing the title Polynesia, Allen utilises a neo-romantic mirroring of a subject with its title, a feature commonly utilised by many artists of the period; such as Len Lye, George Woods, Russell Clark and Rita Angus.

The high finish that Jim has given to the ancaster limestone gives the nude figure a human quality all the more reinforced by the stylisation and articulation of her limbs. Like his teacher Frank Dobson's own figurative sculpture and drawing, there is a scrutinising focus upon expressing an erotic nature to the woman's form.

The figure does not result from any preparatory drawing; being in itself a direct stone carving which began at the front and then progressed to the rear of the figure. Ancaster stone is Middle Jurassic period oolitic limestone, quarried around Ancaster, Lincolnshire. This warm and fleshy material was one of Frank Dobson's and Henry Moore's own favourite British stones.

Together with Molly Macalister, Jim Allen is a key post World War II New Zealand sculptor. All of Jim's publicly commissioned work has been unfortunately destroyed. His commission for the Pakuranga Mall just disappeared. Polynesia is the artist's only major sculpture pre-1965 which is now extant.

The artist placed this sculpture on loan to The University of Auckland in 1952 and chose to gift it to the people of Auckland in 2007 as a permanent addition to this Gallery's collection. It has since become one of the public's favourite examples of New Zealand sculpture.

Jim Allen (William Robert Allen) was born in Wellington in 1922 and was enrolled at the Wellington Technical Institute from 1939 to 1940. After enlisting in the New Zealand Army, he travelled to Egypt and Italy and later studied sculpture at the Institute di Arte in Florence. Returning to New Zealand in 1946, he studied sculpture at the the University of Canterbury School of Fine Art under Francis Shurrock and graduated in 1948.
With the support of a New Zealand Art Society scholarship, Jim Allen continued studying at the Royal College of Art in London under the tutelage of Professor Frank Dobson. At the same time he worked part-time for the sculptor James Woodford. After returning to New Zealand during 1952, he gained a position within the arts and craft section of the Department of Education in Auckland, before working as a lecturer, then Professor of Sculpture at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland (1960 to 1977). (I am grateful to Kate McGahey for these biographical notes.)

From 1977 he became the distinguished Director of the Sydney College of the Arts. Working mainly in a non-figurative style, after 1969 he developed an interest in kinetic sculpture, performance art as well as environmental art working with both town planners and architects on city environs.

Internationally recognised as a major New Zealand artist, Jim Allen has exhibited extensively. His influence as an artist and teacher is widely regarded as exemplary. As both a mentor and art educator he is considered an emblematic teacher within this country's tertiary art community.

During the last Auckland Triennial, Jim presented a conversation with Simon Ingram that was a revelation to all were lucky enough to have attended. Jim confirmed how much his work has been about people and their relationships. Instead of being a postulation of theory, all of his art has been dedicated to the reality of human experience. This fact is not widely discussed in the the literature about his vocation as an artist.

In April 2007 Jim Allen was invested with an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Sydney in gratitude for his contribution to the art of Australia. He is also an Honorary Doctor of AIT University. Jim's contribution to contemporary art in New Zealand is both on-going and exemplary.

I am not a portrait photographer but I could not let the occasion of one of Jim's visits to the gallery go unpassed without taking a snapshot of him with his sculpture Polynesia.

Jim Allen
Polynesia 1952
Ancaster limestone
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
gift of the artist, 2007

Receiving the Greg Semu Archive

One of the joys of being an archivist at the Auckland Art Gallery is the contact I have with artists, so it was with a great sense of anticipation that I arranged to meet with photographer Greg Semu on a recent visit to Auckland to discuss the deposit of his archive with the E H McCormick Research Library. Greg agreed to the long-term loan of his negatives, proof sheets and reels of film.  

When I went with one of our registrars to collect the material, our first archive from a Pacific artist, Greg asked whether he might add to the loan.  So now, we are lucky enough to have in addition, hundreds of prints, examples of Greg’s commercial work in the form of magazines and videos, exhibition ephemera and diaries, as well as the negatives.

Greg generously allowed the Research Library to exhibit items from the archive immediately. With Home AKL soon to be shown, we decided to mount a display in the Library’s exhibition case to celebrate the loan and give Gallery visitors some idea of the practice of a very significant New Zealand photographer. 

Better to Give: The Greg Semu Archive will be on display until Monday 22 October outside the Library entrance on the Mezzanine level. You can also find out more about all the artists represented in Home AKL (and ask them questions!) on the exhibition's Facebook page. 

New York Times special issue on Museums

Yesterday, the New York Times published its regular special issue on Museums. If you have never checked these out here’s the link
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/artsspecial/?ref=arts
The current issue has some fascinating back-stories like how visitors use cameras to experience art, what curators do and the growth in museum based education. Recommended.

Guess who's coming to town?

If you’ve been keeping up with the Gallery via Twitter or Facebook you might have noticed some teaser posts letting you know which high-profile artists will be ‘coming to town’ as part of Degas to Dalí… but if you haven’t, here are the names we’ve shared so far:

• René Magritte
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• Francis Bacon
• Edouard Manet
• Auguste Rodin
• Pablo Picasso
• Max Ernst
• Georges Seurat
• Andy Warhol
• Henri Matisse
• Lucian Freud

Remember, they’re just some of the highlights out of 62 artists whose work will be winging its way here from the National Galleries of Scotland. Keep an eye on our social media feeds as we continue to hint at what will be on display.

If you'd like more information about the exhibition or about buying tickets (which are available now via the EDGE) check out the dedicated section on our website.

Image: Edgar Degas, A Group of Dancers, 1890s
Oil on paper, laid on canvas
Scottish National Gallery
© Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland
www.nationalgalleries.org

Eric Resetar

Rod MacLeod asked me to post his tribute to Eric Resetar:

"I would just like to let people know that Eric Resetar, one of the original pioneers of comics in New Zealand, has died at the age of 83. He was well known by much of the front of house staff for his visits to the art gallery over the last few years, usually to visit me and exchange DVDs of old movies that we shared. Eric was one of the main stars of the Cartoon Show in 2001-2 where his original comics were shown in the NZ comic art section. He was also honoured with a huge blow up of his early drawings in the specially built and decorated room alongside the work of Barry Linton, Cornelius Stone and the late Marty Emond.



I met him while researching the show and we got on like a house on fire. He was living in a tiny clutter filled pensioner flat in Onehunga and was quite bemused by being the centre of attention for a few weeks. He famously made comics while still a teenager during the war, with help from his brother Ian who saw his younger brothers talent and passion. Inspired by Buck Rogers he created Crash Carson, and most famously, Crash O’Kane, an All Black on Mars, selling up to 10,000 copies of his titles, many to American GI’s. Eric never married and ran a number of second-hand bookshops throughout Auckland. Held in high respect by comic makers in New Zealand, the annual comic awards, the Erics, are named after him."
Rod MacLeod

The ‘near documentary’ vision of Jeff Wall

Throughout the 1970s, a camera artist like Walker Evans was lauded as a ‘documentary’ photographer. It was easy, then, to regard his work so simply. Such a skewed perspective was fashionable and a stance driven by the recognition that the Farm Security Administration’s photographic project resulted in some of the best portraits ever of America’s identity. As a plain record maker, Walker’s achievement was pigeonholed as that of a photographer who merely discovered his subjects rather than transformed our understanding of them.

Today, the term ‘documentary’ is used much more hesitantly. Post-modernism caused this shift because new approaches to camera work appeared that validated the trope of ‘fabricated to be photographed’ imagery. Two of the most notable practioners of this mode of image construction are Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman.

Jeff Wall’s art has recently shifted in its nature and direction. It has become less art historical in its referencing and more connected with an expression of streetwise experience. Jeff has a fascinating show at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York until 21 January 2012. The gallery’s promotion of the show is perceptive: “In these new works the artist continues to address the neo-realist and near-documentary concerns at the core of his practice for the past decades.”

Near-documentary? Marian Goodman’s press-release further states that Wall’s art is a “hybrid integration of the documentary and the cinematographic, the ‘street’ and the monumental, two directions he has pursued simultaneously, while being partial to neither.” I would add that Jeff’s new images engage with youth culture and elegantly mess about with its chaos.

If you have seen Jeff Wall’s art then its physical scale is essential to its perception. The fact that his new photographs appear to be on the cusp of reality without ever representing reality is a key to how you can read them. Obviously, they are records of an instantaneous moment where action appears irreal. More than that, they are momentary dramas.

I am grateful to Marian for permission to reproduce Jeff’s photographs.
http://www.mariangoodman.com/

CREDITS:
Jeff Wall
Boxing 2011
Colour photograph
87-3/4 x 119-1/2 x 2 in.
222.8 x 303.5 x 5.08 cm
(Inv.#13263)
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris

Jeff Wall
Band and crowd 2011
Chromogenic print
92-1/2 x 168-3/4 x 2 in.
234.9 x 428.6 x 5.08 cm
(Inv.#13394)
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris

Woollaston's Wellington

Since blog posting two of Toss Woollaston’s paintings held at Auckland Art Gallery, I wondered how whether people are familiar with his 1937 Wellington landscape?

Rita Angus’ painting Cass of a year earlier gets attention for its lyrical image of backcountry hills and its honed realism but Woollaston’s Wellington is as fascinating. Maybe it is the mix of angular geometry and gritty shadow. The moodiness of Woollaston’s palette intrigues me. What other local painter was using rose-madder and puce-violet with a lapis-lazuli blue? I once talked with Toss about the colours that he used in Wellington and we laughed about anti-regionalist his view of inner city Wellington was. In a sense, Wellington is the opposite of Cass.

Toss Woollaston first described his recently completed painting in an issue of the magazine Art in New Zealand in the same year: 'That picture was a piece of almost spontaneous painting, and is not so much a likeness of Wellington as a symbol of my personal reaction to it. I must say I don't admire Wellington's domestic architecture, and as I looked over the scene I felt that I must express the actual chaos of Wellington's buildings by an almost abstract symbol of chaos.'

Woollaston had visited Wellington to meet publisher Harry Tombs and stayed with the painter Thomas McCormick at his Hill Street home. The view is from the house’s back window. Like Robert Field’s paintings of the same period, there is lots of blank space between the brushstrokes. Woollaston, like Cezanne, demarcates the blank space volumetrically. One’s eye imagines the spatial completion of each object.

When looking at Woollaston’s paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s it is important to remember that his work was among the most innovative New Zealand painting of the time. Up until the early 1970s, the physical scale of his work was modest. Nevertheless, it packs a graphic wallop.

CREDIT
Toss Woollaston (1910-1998)
Wellington 1937
oil on paper mounted on card
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
purchased 1960
1960/4

Upper Moutere by Toss Woollaston

I have been looking daily at how our forthcoming display of modern New Zealand art will look on Saturday 3 September. The Gallery's new lighting system is the best technology that the artworks have ever been served by. It is pleasing to see what new lighting can improve how works are perceived. With a combination of wall washes and spotlights we have modulated both the ambient and direct light sources.

A painting that I hope visitors will enjoy seeing is Toss Woollaston's Upper Moutere from 1946. This is not a painting that has been seem frequently yet it is a powerful example of how Woollaston would look at a view that he was totally familiar with in such an energetic manner. Although it is painted with oil paint it has the spontaneity of watercolour

Toss wrote: 'I like to paint looking, with the light, towards the subject in clear weather. I am not a "weather" man - I am not interested in atmosphere… I'm interested in what I see, and seeing it in the clearest conditions you can get - no mysteries of that sort.'

During the spring of 1945 Toss Woollaston and his friend Colin McCahon both lived in the Nelson area. World War II had just ended and they were encouraged that there was a more positive future for their family and for their vocation as artists. When Woollaston and McCahon met at this period they discussed art, especially the work of Paul Cezanne, which they studied from a recently published book. Cezanne taught them a lesson: to look at your own landscape so closely that you can visually represent its identity. Upper Moutere fascinated Woollaston and he painted it many times over the next forty years.

CREDIT:
Toss Woollaston (1910-1998)
Upper Moutere 1946
oil on board
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
purchased 1959
1959/8/1

Figures from Life

Gallery Director Peter Tomory once said that Toss Woollaston's Figures from Life was the first modern portrait in New Zealand. He was both right and wrong.

Modern portraits really began here in New Zealand with the arrival of James Nairn and Petrus van der Velden in 1890. Their example was paralleled by Grace Joel at Dunedin.

What Peter meant, I think, was that Figures from Life was the first modernist portrait in New Zealand. That would be much closer to the truth. In 1936, it was a radical work.

The Woollaston has always meant much to me because I recall seeing it for the first time as a child reproduced on the cover of Tomory's book on New Zealand painting. I stared at it for hours. It intrigued me then and it still does now.

When the Gallery reopens in just over a week Toss Woollaston's Figures from Life will be on show for the first time in some years. I have taken a lot of care to ensure that it looks terrific. I have used a coloured archival over-matt so the pastel paper ground has the best possible surrounding. As well, I have had a new frame constructed that is much more appropriate to the painting. The red umber frame has a smudgy and worn rusticity that is nothing like the decorator style frames which are still so much in fashion. It looks better for seeming to be more home-made.

Woollaston adored this work, it is his first major portrait. It shows his fiance Edith with their friend Rodney Kennedy. Rodney was a long-long friend and he helped organise Woollaston's first solo exhibition in 1936.

The dry paint is sketchy, using colours that express feeling rather than the colour of flesh. This was a provocative approach. It energised Colin McCahon, who, by gifting it to the Gallery in 1954, ensured that this is the first artwork by Woollaston to enter the Gallery's collection.

Credit:
Toss Woollaston (1910-1998)
Figures from Life, 1936
oil on paper
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, gift of Colin McCahon, 1954

My Gallery

As a born and raised Aucklander, the Gallery was a recurring presence in my childhood. My earliest memory of it is only half-formed: flickering images of intimidating carved wooden figures. A quick talk to my mum confirmed we did indeed go to see the exhibition Te Maori Te Hokinga Mai: The Return Home – I was only four years old at the time but it clearly made an impression.

The first exhibition I really interacted with, though, was Rembrandt to Renoir: 300 Years of European Masterpieces from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, as a 10-year-old. It was a Sunday family outing and we dressed smartly for the occasion. I remember the paintings displayed against black walls and being taught by my parents how to view the impressionist paintings from a distance so they ‘made sense’.

A visit to the Gallery was a common school trip (see also: MOTAT, the Museum, Kelly Tarlton’s). Most of my recollections, however, centre around the journey rather than the exhibitions: riding on a bus, lining up outside in the courtyard for what seemed to be an interminably long time and on at least one occasion spotting a dead pigeon in the fountain. Inside? I haven’t the foggiest idea what we saw but I know we had to be very quiet, and we were not allowed to run around or touch anything. This was a huge challenge for my hyperactive self.

A quick flick through my parents’ bookshelf reveals the catalogue for Love and Death: Pictures from the Collection (1993-1994) so it’s highly likely I was carted along to that too, and I know I saw at least one of the McCahon retrospectives that were held in the 1990s.

In sixth form I started studying art history and a visit to the Gallery was no longer something that was organised for me, but something I instigated. After a term studying pop art, I bowled on up to the Andy and Friends exhibition with my mother and a friend feeling extremely smug for already knowing so much about many of the artworks. How clever I thought I was to be able to appreciate pop art, while my poor bourgeois mum preferred ‘old-fashioned’ landscapes and portraits. We also popped over the road to the NEW Gallery to see Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Paintings of Richard Killeen, where we found more of a middle ground.

Everything changed again when I turned up to university in my scruffy jeans and realised how much I really had to learn about art. Of course, I knew what I liked, but often my reasons for enjoying a painting were nothing to do with execution, technical excellence or profound subject matter. While other students gazed intently upon a Very Serious History Painting and scribbled down notes, I would be sniggering at artworks like Cornelius Johnson’s Portrait of a Lady.

Cornelius Johnson, Portrait of a Lady, 1633

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased with funds from the M A Serra Trust, 1977 

I challenge you to look at this woman without a titter. I love her gormless expression, the absurdity of her broad-shouldered attire and the odd composition that sees her sitting beneath a vast amount of empty space. Maybe I wasn’t the most academic of scholars, but I did learn the importance of having an emotional reaction to an artwork.

After graduating I have to admit I forgot about my gallery. I did make it in to see Rita Angus: Life and Vision and the preview of Julian and Josie Robertson’s Promised Gift (which you can see in its entirety when we open on 3 September) but most of the time it fell into the ‘one of these days’ basket when planning my weekends.

So there you have it – a potted history of my interactions with the Gallery. The thing that stands out when I look through the exhibitions history is how much I have missed. Like many Aucklanders, I’ve spent years professing my earnest intentions of visiting the Gallery more often and never quite got around to it. Countless exhibitions full of artists I now count amongst my favourites have passed me by and I regret this.

So how about you? Were you an avid gallery-goer, or were you only ever dragged in kicking and screaming? In 15 days’ time, we’ll be giving Aucklanders a whole new set of memories, but right now I’d love to hear how the Gallery has looked through your eyes over the years...

Get ready to feast your eyes...

When the Gallery opens on 3 September (67 days away!), visitors will be able to experience a huge selection of art from our collection of over 15,000 artworks in a series of opening exhibitions.

But we can now announce another treat for art lovers - and for the people of Auckland. On opening day, and right through the Rugby World Cup, the Gallery will have the entire Robertson Promised Gift of 15 world-class modernist artworks on display.

The collection, owned by New York art collectors Julian and Josie Robertson, includes artworks by Picasso, Dalí, Mondrian, Matisse and other similarly significant artists.

In 2009 the Robertsons pledged to bequeath these artworks to the Gallery. A showcase of five paintings that year attracted 10,000 visitors in just one week, so we're thrilled to be able to share the whole collection with Aucklanders and all our visitors when we open.

Yesterday we invited media to tour some of the restored and renovated Gallery spaces - this is the sight that awaited them in the newly named Julian and Josie Robertson galleries. We are proud to be able to honour both Josie (who sadly passed away in 2010) and Julian in this way.

Pacific Cities

Yesterday in the E.H. McCormick Research Library I came across a little catalogue of an exhibition held at the Gallery exactly 40 years ago. Called Pacific Cities, it was a remarkable show of artworks loaned from institutions in nine cities around the Pacific: Honolulu Academy of Arts, Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, Henry Gallery in Seattle, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, The National Museum of the Philippines in Manila, Queensland Art Gallery and the Newcastle Art Gallery.

This international spread was put on to celebrate the opening of the Gallery’s new Edmiston Wing. Officially opened to the public by Governor General Sir Arthur Porrit on the 16th April 1971, this addition to the building had been a long time coming. Funded from a generous bequest made by prominent Auckland citizen Philip Edmiston, the building project had been the subject of planning and discussion since the details of Edmiston’s will were announced in 1946. Decision-making was complicated by calls to erect an entirely new building for the Gallery, but in 1953 the City Council resolved that the Gallery should remain on its historical site.

The Edmiston development was designed in the office of the City architect, Mr E.M. Wainscott and the project architect was Mr B.C. Robinson. The new wing took three years to build, with staff offices relocated to the Town Hall from 1968. The design of the wing was a ‘modernisation’ of the existing Victorian architecture of the building, which mimicked the rhythms of the old façade in a stripped back, modern style.

Moira McLeod, writing for the trade journal Building Progress, waxed lyrical about the new design: “Bold concrete slabs cast in situ with special boxing add to the contrasting light and shade, solid and void, design of the exterior.” She went on to detail interior furnishings of the wing, including the flooring of “manganese brown acid-resistant quarry tiles” and walls covered in “buff-painted Scandinavian jute”; noting especially that “The 65oz bronze deep velvet pile carpet used in the lower galleries and Indian red carpeting on the stairway and upstairs lobbies were special runs by Feltex NZ Ltd.”



The newly austere galleries of the Edmiston Wing provided the perfect stage for the artworks of the Pacific Cities show. This exhibition self-consciously located Auckland in an international network of galleries and museums in a way which prefigured current trends in contemporary art exhibitions. The selection of works was deliberately contemporary and international, with the vast majority of artworks dated within 10 years of the exhibition’s opening in 1971, and several works having been made as recently as 1970.

Ian Fairweather, Epiphany, 1962

Artists were selected because they were seen to represent geographic diversity. The Queensland Art Gallery lent Ian Fairweather's Epiphany, saying 'His art has its roots in that of Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Bali and India and shows particularly the influences of Chinese calligraphic painting and that of the Indian cave paintings of Ajanta.' Other galleries lent works that they felt best demonstrated the cutting-edge work of the young artists of their region, such as the Vancouver Art Gallery with works like Iain Baxter's Bagged Landscape, which is made from vinyl and contains water.

Iain Baxter, Bagged Landscape, 1966

Interestingly, given the current success of exhibitions like the Auckland Triennial and the Asia-Pacific Triennial, which are designed to bring local and international art together, Pacific Cities did not include any New Zealand art. The Gallery’s then director, Gil Docking, wrote in the exhibition catalogue “As the host city, we have allotted our galleries to our guests”, and continued on to comment, “Many of us would like to see the Pacific Cities Loan Exhibition become a triennial event on Auckland’s calendar.”

If these walls could talk ...

For reopening, I have been working on an exhibition that looks at the Gallery’s architecture - from the competition for its design in 1883 to the present day development. Of course, a building’s history is much more than the bricks and mortar with which it’s made. It has made me wonder: ‘if these walls could talk, what would they say?’

City Gallery, looking through to Mackelvie Gallery, 1897 (left), Auckland Free Library reading room (today’s Wellesley Gallery), 1889 (right)

The building has served as not only an art gallery, but also Auckland’s main public library until 1971; and in its early years also housed council offices. So what are your memories of the building and its various purposes? Are there favourite exhibitions? Particular performances or events that still resonate? Memories of singular art works? Experiences of rooms or spaces and how they’ve changed?

To start the ball rolling here are some of mine...

My earliest memory of the Gallery is looking down from the mezzanine level of the Wellesley Gallery to take in the Chinese Buried Warriors – a truly awe inspiring sight for a 10 year old.

The Buried Army of Qin Shihuang, Aug – Oct 1986, installation views, Wellesley Gallery

Another early memory is of the historic international collection installed in the Mackelvie Gallery following the 1980s renovation. What sticks in my mind in particular is the moss green carpet, which I wrongly remember running over the walls, as well as the floor! I was fascinated by Pietro Paolini’s The Fortune Teller: Its velvety tones and textures; the wicked exchange of gestures and glances; the story that was very evidently behind the painting.

International collection, installation view of the Grey and Mackelvie Galleries, 1985 (left), Pietro Paolini, The Fortune Teller, oil on canvas, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Mr Norman B Spencer, 1961 (right)

I recall waiting for what seemed like hours to get into Rembrandt to Renoir as a high school student (although appalling little about the exhibition itself) and writing copious notes in my 6th form art journal about a very inspirational talk by then curator, Alexa Johnston, in The 50s Show. It was the first time I was truly aware of the dramatic possibilities of exhibition making.

The 50s Show, Nov 1992 – Mar 1993, installation view (left), John Reynolds, Raft of the Medusa, 1992, mixed media on plywood, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery, 1993 (right)

While at University, I remember encountering Ralph Hotere’s Godwit Kuaka and John Reynold’s Raft of the Medusa shortly after the ground floor galleries were refurbished in 1998 (bye-bye carpet!). The scale and the quality of the works really impressed upon me the calibre of our contemporary artists.

And then, I found myself working at the Gallery in late 2002. I was particularly starry-eyed when I started – I had my ultimate dream job. Just to walk through the Gallery to my office every morning was a privilege. When shows would change over there was the palpable sense of discovering works anew and having my own private viewing.

Since that time, there are favourite exhibitions I have worked on. Bringing together Colin McCahon’s 1960s Waterfall series with the 18th-century William Hodges painting that originally inspired him in Fall of Water, Fall of Light. Celebrating Rembrandt’s 400th birthday and his influence as a master etcher in Masters of the Bitten Line.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Rembrandt in a Heavy Fur Cap, 1631, etching, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1961 (left), Te Moananui a Kiwa, installed in Mackelvie Gallery with Michael Parekowhai’s Kapa Haka (Pakaka), 2003 in immediate foreground (right)

Another instance that particularly stands out: the placement of Michael Parekowhai’s Kapa Haka (Pakaka) in front of 19th-century New Zealand landscapes. It was a juxtaposition that was intended to work on several levels – but it performed an unexpected one. When leaving the building after hours, a number of staff including security reported jumping at the sight of the hulking figure standing guard in the dark. Even during opening hours, you often did a double take at his presence.
So, what are your memories of the building and what has occurred within it? Did you study in the Wellesley Gallery when it was a library? Attend the highly memorable Artichoke, when the entire collection was hung edge-to-edge? Is there a particular work you are looking forward to reacquainting with? We’d love to hear.

- Jane Davidson-Ladd, Associate Curator