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.

Auckland Art Gallery celebrates 125 years

The opening of Auckland Art Gallery at 3.30pm on Friday 17 February 1888

It is nearly 125 years since Auckland Art Gallery opened.

No photographs were taken at the opening of Auckland Art Gallery, 3.30pm on Friday 17 February 1888. This was because interior photography, other than in purpose-built portrait studios, was not technically available in Auckland at that time. Yet, from the news coverage, we learn that many people converged at the Gallery’s entrance in Coburg Street (now Kitchener Street) to attend this occasion. The speeches were given inside the exhibition room proudly described as ‘the largest Art Gallery in the Australian Colony…105 feet in length, 32 feet in breadth… with a wall space of 5,890 square feet’. Interestingly, news coverage of the event noted that many women were present. I suppose many of the men who might have been there were at their jobs.

The speakers at the opening were Mayor Albert Devore, Governor Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois, KCMG, CB and Auckland Society of Art President Mr E A McKechnie. The governor said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this Art Gallery is, thanks to Sir George Grey, the first permanent one in New Zealand’. He added, presciently, ‘it is most gratifying to know that there are already many able artists in this country whose work will become the foundation of a New Zealand school of painting’.

The Gallery was still being completed at the time of the Library’s opening on Tuesday 22 March 1887. Sir George Grey, twice governor of New Zealand, had been central to the Grand Opening Ceremony of Auckland’s Public Library. In his address, Grey provided an account of the need for arts and knowledge to inform the public. In early February 1888, Sir George informed the Mayor of Auckland that he was unwell and would be unable to attend the Gallery opening, yet the 28 paintings, which he had gifted, would be on show. The Herald commentator described many of the artworks in detail.

One of the features which emerge from the opening speaker’s comments that day is the notion that Auckland Art Gallery should collect both international and New Zealand art. It was suggested that living artists’ works be included. As well as this, the speakers expressed the wish that the City of Auckland, its businesses and its citizens work together to support both the growth and development of the Gallery.

Mayor Devore commented that although artworks had already been gifted and loaned, he hoped more gifting of art would occur. The governor added he believed Sir George Grey’s philanthropy and his endowment of books and art to the Library and Gallery was expressly ‘for the free use of the people’.

It has been fascinating to review which artworks the public saw on Friday 17 February 1888. They have helped determine the subsequent collection’s growth and focus.

Caspar Netscher’s Girl Arranging Flowers was one of Sir George Grey’s personal favorites; it had belonged to his mother. The 1862 William Ewart painting of his equerry Hami Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs) was the first New Zealand portrait to enter the Gallery’s collection. Governor Grey had commissioned this work. One of the first examples of New Zealand contemporary art shown at the Gallery, which had already entered the collection, was Kennett Watkins’ The Home of the Cormorants, Waitakere Ranges, 1886 – a very recent view of a swamp in west Auckland.

Recalling the opening of the Gallery demonstrates that a vision for the its future existed 125 years ago. The current reality of the Gallery was imagined on that occasion, as was the future nature of the art collection. The opening speakers probably had zero consciousness that the collection would have expanded – at the moment of its 125th anniversary to 15,402 items. All of these can be accessed via the Gallery’s website. So very many of them have been acquired by Auckland’s citizens through our city Council or via gifts, bequests and long-term loans from generous individuals and organisations.


CREDITS:
Caspar Netscher
Girl Arranging Flowers 1683
oil on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of Sir George Grey, 1883

William Ewart
Hami Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs) 1862
oil on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of Sir George Grey, 1887

Kennett Watkins
The Home of the cormorants, Waitakere Ranges 1886
gouache
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of students of the artist, 1888

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.

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

Remembering Rita Angus

I recently asked on this blog what Rita Angus’s voice sounded like. I was telephoned by Petar Vuletic and he told me that he knew her well towards the end of her life. I asked Petar to draft some recollections about the artist. Petar kindly sent me the following memoir; which I have illustrated with a painting that Rita painted shortly before she met him.
I first met Rita Angus when I bowled up to her home in the 60s. I was a young university student. I arrived unannounced and she graciously received me. After that, we would meet whenever I came to Wellington. This was over a period and I have not thought about it really until now when someone mentioned your blog and that you were interested in what Rita had sounded like.

We would go for long walks around Wellington -for hours at a time and on one occasion for nearly 6 hours. I recall on the last walk we ever had, we would pause every 100 yards or so, for her to rest and then carry on. During these walks, she would be pointing things out that were of interest and relevance to her. For example - the pile of gravestones that had been uprooted from a cemetery to make way for a motorway. This was a short distance from where she lived, landmarks such as the French Maid coffeehouse. On these walks we would be discussing art, what had influenced her and in particular what had influenced her the most. I recall in this regard her telling me that what had been the seminal influence on her art had been an exhibition of Canadian Regional Art (in the 1930s).

I recall her also telling me how upset she was about some of what was being written about her and her art and how strongly she disagreed with it. She disagreed about there being a so-called ‘harsh quality of New Zealand light”. It has nothing to do with my work she had said more than once. Also she showed me some of her works which included small abstract paintings one of which was I thought exceptional. I believe that this work went to North America and I have never seen it since. Curiously, it reminded me of both Malevich and Kandinsky. We talked about other art and artists such as Theo Schoon. I recall her talking about the Milligans who used to host regular meetings for artists in their circle.

After our walks; and sometimes before we set out, she would make me a cup of tea at her home. The china was English bone china. As a consequence of our long walks and the time spent together I have a very distinct recollection of her voice. As you may appreciate, it is difficult to describe such things.

However, as my first language is not English, I have always been interested in accents, and in the different forms of regional and class dialects in New Zealand (as an outsider -born here, but nonetheless apart.) Some districts have terms peculiar to that region for example - containers in which strawberries are sold were called variously: pottles, (Dunedin), punnets, (Wellington), and chips. (Auckland). New Zealanders have considerable variation from province to province and island to island. It may seem less so to those whose first language is English, as one never perceives that one has an accent oneself, instead, it is all about other people.

From my perspective, I should describe her speaking voice as strong and firm, not loud but quite forceful. Clear in enunciation, precise, and never mumbling or indistinct. I should describe her as having a New Zealand educated, provincial accent. Not twangy, reflecting or so it seemed an accent more usual when one is from a comfortable financial background- but particularly such as found in the Hawke’s Bay and lower North Island. Not like the Remuera version of the received pronunciation of English. Nor was it like the Fred Dagg parody of New Zealand English, so beloved by advertising agencies and others who like to over exaggerate, to make a difference when the subtleties are there, anyway.

I have a 92 year old aunt, born in Carterton, and educated there and in Horowhenua, whose grandmother was a teacher and father a farmer, whose accent reminds me very much of Rita Angus. Words and phrases from those places and those times recur in her speech and also remind me of Rita.

This is how it seems to me looking back now after all these years. Rita seemed to like me. She was very open and forthcoming. I doubt that I was unique in this. Over the years I have found it upsetting to hear her described as unpleasant, ill mannered and difficult to approach or talk to. That was not my experience. I found her warm, gracious; receptive to ideas; and to the discussion of art. She did feel used by factions in the art establishment of the time. She did not like this and was quite forceful to me about this. It would not be surprising then if those who tried to manipulate her and her work to their own ends found her unreceptive.
Petar Vuletic

Caption:
Rita Angus
Scrub burning, Northern Hawke's Bay 1965
oil on board
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
purchased 1966

Jim Vivieaere and Colin McCahon

I have been really busy working towards the opening of Home AKL on Saturday 7 July and have had no time to contribute to this blog recently.

In searching for a quotation by Jim Vivieaere today I came across two unsourced portraits.

One is of Jim and the other is of Colin McCahon. I think that one of Colin may have been taken in 1950.

As these portraits were unknown to me I thought that I would share them.

With apologies to the unknown copyright holders - if they are known to anyone, please send comments on to me.

Jan Nigro 1920-2012

It is with wrenching sadness that I write of the recent passing of Jan Nigro. Born at Gisborne in 1920, Jan enrolled at the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1937. Her teachers were Auckland’s key art tutors of the period – Archibald Fisher, John Weeks and A. Lois White. Their inspiration and their commitment to figuration stayed with Jan for life. In fact, when I review New Zealand’s art scene she is one of the very few artists to have had a career of 75 years. We laughed about this remarkable fact – the length of her commitment to the visual arts – on almost every occasion that we met.

I much admired Jan. She asked me three times to speak at openings of her shows. Reviewing what I said on those occasions has only confirmed the deep conviction I have about her work. Here is an extract from the speech that I gave at Jan’s opening at Jane Sanders’s Gallery in March 2003. The Mayor of Auckland was present, as were two local Members of Parliament. It was a very big crowd. The show celebrated Bathers and there was much nudity and partial nudity. Some people were obviously surprised; some were trying hard not to seem startled. Jan did not set out to produce work that shocked but she did want the viewer to confront the nude reality of humanity.

I spoke loudly as it was a huge space: ‘One of the talents that I cherish about Jan Nigro is that she can really draw. In conversation with me she noted: “The figure was drummed into me by Archie Fisher, he dragged me into the life class, he trained me to look at the figure…I have had many years being frustrated in the lack of interest in the figurative.”

‘Jan’s right – we all know that figures can sometimes be scary in art, especially when they reach out to us and jolt us with what it means to look closely at the body. We have at least two ways to look at the figure. We know that there is a male gaze and a female gaze and that they are not the same way of seeing. To look at the body is to be its spectator.

‘Jan noted to me: “Naked and nude: there is no difference between the naked and the nude, but the public thinks so. Clothes give people a period in time but when you strip them, the body is quite universal…I have looked at women and men a lot. I look at male models and female models. Men and women are both people. I find men and women just as important as the other, as painterly models. I want to see from a male and from a female perspective… I look for the feminine shape in the female and the masculine shape in the male.”

‘If I were to use one adjective to describe Jan’s gaze, it would be this: scopophilic. This is the love of looking, of looking with love’s eye and with its heart. Jan does not objectify men and women into mere objects simply to be looked at. She does not make her figures wait for our eye; she makes them talk to our eye. She wants us to feel, like her, a desire to look. Looking is empowering because it accepts a human need that is rarely recognised for its own public essentiality. An eroticism where gender and sexuality come together as figural representation. I am not talking here about the voyeuristic or the festishistic. I am focusing on the nature of the gaze that Jan Nigro reveals: she invites us to question who is looking at whom, where and for why.’

In 2004, I spoke on the occasion of Jan Nigro’s exhibition Sad movies make me cry. I discovered the following statements while searching Google for references to Jan. To quote: ‘Jan Nigro is one of only a small number of successful New Zealand artists concentrating on the figure.’ ‘Jan is preoccupied with people, and thinks this is one reason why her work was initially accepted more readily in Australia than in New Zealand.’ ‘Jan Nigro’s figurative drawings are legendary for their blatant erotic realism.’

In 2010, I again spoke about Jan and I asked her, ‘How frank should I be Jan?’ She said ‘Be frank, utterly, be utterly frank.’ I realised just how difficult it had been for Jan to be a figurative artist who was known for addressing the nude with searing regard. The older she got, the braver she seemed. Here is what Jan said about this: ‘The nude has always been a no no to the general public. I need to look beyond the skin at the social, sexual, cultural or even psychological complexities although I admit that’s a tough one. Gender overlapping, looking for a different mood in male and female iconography, ambiguity: these are words I like.’

I said at the time, ‘I admire Jan for her staunch commitment. I respect her example, her bravery and her talent to never flinch away from the human figure but to celebrate it, to cherish it, to grapple with it, while never underplaying the true difficulty of dealing with gender and sexuality in New Zealand’s culture, let alone in New Zealand’s art culture.’

In 2009, Jan Nigro presented two exceptional artworks to the people of Auckland. I selected the two pieces and she generously presented them to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Summer Encounter dates from 1972–3. It is a close-up of a woman’s face, from just above her chin to the bridge of her nose. She wears large sunglasses and part of her face, from her left nostril, is occluded behind a vertical form which could be a curtain or it could be simply a vertical form. The painting plays with a conversation between abstraction and figuration, and this dialectic between representation and evocation has been a continuous conversation in Jan’s work.

The other gift was a large exhibition drawing entitled A Man of the Seventies. Jan drew this work in 1974. I showed a print of it to a colleague and I asked him what immediately came to mind and his reply was ‘Pop star – Mr Lee Grant’. Cocky, confident, sexy, sinuous, a girly sort of mannishness. If you were to do a survey of all the other drawings made in New Zealand during 1974 and you then you added in all the paintings made in New Zealand during 1974. You would not find any artwork that was in any way as sexualised as this one is.

Jan always caught her figure’s pose, their gesture, their clothing or lack of it, their contraposto, their sexiness. Jan made males less obviously masculine and more overtly feminine. It is one of her many gifts – to render gender and sexuality as what it is - a fluid, mobile, motile humanity.

Captions:
Jan Nigro

The Red Hat 1949
oil on board
purchased 1951

A Man of the Seventies 1974
pencil
gift of Jan Nigro, 2009

Summer Encounter 1972-73
oil on board
gift of Jan Nigro, 2009

Standing Woman 1968
pencil
purchased 1969
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

Revealed, concealed

New Gallery [now Mackelvie Gallery], c1916

One of the highlights of the developed Gallery building is the Mackelvie Gallery, which has been painstakingly returned to its former glory as a Victorian neo-classical picture gallery. The interior of this 1916 room was removed in successive renovations in the 1950s and the 1980s. The last time its decorative columns saw the light of day was in 1979 when Billy Apple temporarily exposed them as part of an artwork titled Revealed/Concealed.

Apple is best known for his self-branding, for his witty and conceptual Pop works and for his sly investigations into the workings of the art market. In 1975, and again in 1979 he turned a critical eye on New Zealand’s art galleries, touring around the country creating works which explored the ideology and politics of art exhibition spaces – the behind-the-scenes mechanics of an art gallery. (See Wystan Curnow's account of this tour from page 10 of the Gallery Quarterly here).

Mezzanine Gallery [now Mackelvie Gallery] 1956

At Auckland Art Gallery in 1979, Revealed/Concealed literally exposed the architectural history of the gallery, as Apple cut away the walls of the room to show the 1916 columns which were hidden inside. During the ‘modernisation’ of the Mackelvie Gallery under director Eric Westbrook in 1952, the columns had been walled over to create a sleeker, cleaner and more modern look. By 1979, no-one remembered what they looked like – as Wystan Curnow has recorded, when Apple’s project was being discussed, wild speculation about beautiful orange marble columns began to circulate around the Gallery. When the walls were cut away and the columns were finally revealed, they turned out to be rather less spectacular concrete.

Billy Apple, Revealed/Concealed 1979

Courtesy of the Billy Apple Archive

Revealed/Concealed was a two-part work: Apple counterbalanced the revelation of the historic columns by concealing a strange wall niche. This shallow alcove had been built into the wall above the Mackelvie Gallery’s famous curved staircase during the 1952 renovations – for what purpose was unclear exactly, but it spent more time covered by a wall hanging than performing any useful function for the display of art. Apple filled it in, erasing this odd eccentricity from the otherwise undisturbed smoothness of the gallery wall.

Billy Apple, Revealed/Concealed 1979

Courtesy of the Billy Apple Archive

As Wystan Curnow wrote in a 1980 article on the project, “For the artist the art gallery space is a given. For any artist. The gallery wants to give the artist a show, he wants to make something of it. What space does it give him, this show? Which space is it, exactly? What is it? I mean, what does it amount to? These are questions REVEALED-CONCEALED brings to mind. Because it makes changes to and shows changes in the gallery space, the work brings particularly to mind the instability of that given over time. History as a given, then. The record of change; itself subject constantly to revelations and concealments.”

Billy Apple, Revealed/Concealed 1979

Courtesy of the Billy Apple Archive

By displaying the spaces that were themselves designed for the display of art, what Apple ultimately revealed was how these containers for art are flexible and unstable – they are subject to change both physically and ideologically.

Mackelvie Gallery 2011

The recent reinstatement of the Mackelvie Gallery’s 1916 design was a triumph of heritage restoration. The interior of the room was almost entirely stripped out in the 1980s, and the original intricate plasterwork has been carefully rebuilt using only two surviving historic photographs. Revived again 95 years after it was first opened, the current (and original) design of the Mackelvie Gallery forms an appropriate period context for the Gallery’s Victorian painting collection. The resurrection of the Mackelvie Gallery acknowledges an important period in our building’s history, and also shows how in art galleries, as in art, history can be accommodated, referenced, revealed and concealed.

Clement Greenberg

A few days ago an artist told me how he admired Clement Greenberg’s writings. I was not able to respond sufficiently as it is some years since I read Greenberg’s essays. Also, he has a reputation of being a formalist that despised the social and cultural significance of visual art. A sort of proto post-modernist without the European theoretical underpinnings.

Today, Greenberg is considered a fusty and opinionated critic. Upon re-reading a few volumes I find that he is more impressive a writer than I recalled. His humour is delicious and is totally yiddish in its genesis.

Greenberg’s important essay on art criticism was published posthumously in Partisan Review 1981 Volume XLVII Number 1, the issue dedicated to The State of Criticism. It is also published in Clement Greenberg - the Collected Essays and Criticism, volume 4, edited by John O'Brian. You can access this fantastic essay here.


Here is a selection of Clement Greenberg’s statements:
All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.

The making of superior art is arduous, usually. But under Modernism the appreciation, even more than the making, of it has become more taxing, the satisfaction and exhilaration to be gotten from the best new art more hard-won.

The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.

You do most of your talking about the works and try to say why you think every artist is a law to himself. There's no method.

The trouble with Michelangelo's sculpture is that it's too slick. He was damned good, but he was too arty.

You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye.

When you're young and you maybe can't see art, you're interested in the story.

We have differences but we're not made different. If you don't agree with me, you're wrong.

If you want to change your art, change your habits.

When photography's good, let me put it that way, it's as good as painting.If you really want to get a taste of how incisive Clement Greenberg was about art, watch him speaking about Marcel Duchamp:



Russell Bingham conducted a fascinating interview with Clement Greenberg, which is published in the Edmonton Contemporary Artists’ society newsletter volume 3, issue 2 and volume 4 issue 1:


Russell Bingham: Do you think photography is art.

Clement Greenberg: Of course it is. You're making me rehearse things I've already written. Anything can be experienced aesthetically and the line between art and non-art is so indefinite

RB: Major art, would you say? Have you seen any photography that is major art?

CG: I've never been asked that question before. I don't know. The photographer I admired most in my own time was Walker Evans because in a manner of speaking he told a story. The other was Atget, in the early part of this century, who everybody admires, and they're right to. His pictures don't exactly tell a story, but what I've noticed about good photography is that a good photograph always has some evidence of humanity in it. So you can get a good photograph of a road because humans have built the road. And here's where the subject matter determines everything and not formal qualities.

You will be interested to know that Clement Greenberg visited New Zealand in July 1968. He is recorded as being impressed with the art of Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston. More about this visit later!

Rita and Douglas

Yesterday at the Gallery, Jennifer Ward-Lealand presented a preview of her brilliant performance piece - Rita and Douglas. Created by Dave Armstrong from the letters of Rita Angus and delivered with Michael Houston at piano, this theatrical portrait of the relationship between Rita Angus and Douglas Lilburn has already gained plaudits throughout New Zealand for its insightful characterisation of these renowned artists.

Based on Rita’s feisty letters to Douglas, the production affirms the intense friendship between two of New Zealand’s key artists. It reveals the creative intensity shared between two people of entirely different nature. Lovers for a very short time, but friends for a lifetime.

The brilliance of Rita and Douglas can be experienced at the Auckland Town Hall concert chamber from 22-26 November; Tuesday-Thursday 7pm, Friday-Saturday 8pm. There is a matinee performance at 2pm on the 26th. This is a must-see event. Jennifer even moves like Rita Angus, her astonishing portrayal  is uncanny and powerful for its truthful presence.

Details of this event are available at THE EDGE.

James Wenley’s Auckland Theatre blog presents a fascinating interview with Jennifer:

Image: Chris Corson-Scott

Jennifer Ward-Lealand 2011
colour photograph
courtesy of the artist

Hamish Keith

Hamish Keith visited the Gallery today and spoke eloquently about Colin McCahon's 1952 painting On Building Bridges. As well as discussing the importance of the very first work by the artist to enter a public collection, Hamish noted how important this painting has always been to him.

I told Hamish that I was thrilled to be able to show this work from a 30 metre sight-line within our collection exhibition Toi Aotearoa. Sarah Hillary, principal conservator has cleaned the painting and it looks stunning.

I saw the photographer Chris Corson-Scott was present and I asked if he would mind making a portrait of Hamish together with this remarkable painting by Colin McCahon.

CREDIT:
Chris Corson-Scott
Hamish Keith 2011
colour photograph

Sir Peter Siddell KCNZM, QSO

The Gallery’s staff is much saddened to learn of the passing of Sir Peter Siddell. We extend to his family and friends our heartfelt condolences.

Peter and his late wife Sylvia were close friends of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki over many years. At the launch of the impressive illustrated book dedicated to his work, I spoke to those present about how much the public admire Peter’s paintings as being about their shared memory and experience of Auckland.

In particular, I mentioned his renowned Homecoming that is a valedictory work where Peter remembers his childhood. His visits to this Gallery over many years are recalled by the inclusion within the house of his favourite New Zealand paintings in this collection. This work includes the impressive 19th century merchant’s house in Ponsonby Road that is now occupied by the ASB Trust. Siddell places the building against a volcanic landscape that is typical of Auckland but impossible to identify as being in any one particular suburb. The landscape and the house reveal memory as being inseparable from how we experience a place. Peter once noted that 'Most of the time I paint what I know . . . usually from childhood recollections'. He had delivered the New Zealand Herald newspaper in early-morning Auckland as a boy, so he knew the streets of the city very well.

Peter stated that his ambition is 'to achieve a stillness in my paintings. It's something to do with wanting to freeze a moment in time and regain a bit of the past'. His cityscapes bring together the volcanic landscape and colonial buildings from throughout Auckland. People are almost never included; instead their habitat is focused on. The dramatic late afternoon sky in Horizon 1987 is both dramatic and menacing. This painting was a special gift to the people of Auckland by the Friends of the Gallery.


Some years ago, the Hon John Banks, then Mayor of Auckland City, personally hosted a mayoral luncheon for Peter, Sylvia, their family and friends. It was a happy event where all present saw how much Peter and Sylvia had contributed to this city’s art community for decades. Their passing is mourned.

Dr E H McCormick noted in his 1957 inaugural Friend’s lecture: ‘There are, in fact, several Aucklands: there is an ecclesiastical Auckland finely expressed in the frail perfection of the Selwyn churches; there are the homes of Epsom and Mount Eden redolent of a more spacious past; there are the acres of decaying wood that stretch from Ponsonby to Parnell Road.’

Peter understood Auckland with a true valuing of its history. I once said to him that he was an artistic heir of the Reverend Dr John Kinder, arguably one of New Zealand’s finest colonial painters and photographers. With that marvellous and quizzical smile of his, Peter replied ‘Oh Ron! I am never so preachy but I much appreciate your compliment!’ He knew that ‘seeing’ Auckland is about much more than recognising its topography. We will miss this lovely and generous man.

Captions:
Sir Peter Siddell (1935 -2011)
Homecoming 1976
acrylic on hardboard
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
purchased 1977
1977/6

Sir Peter Siddell (1935 -2011)
Horizon 1987
acrylic on hardboard
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of the Friends of Auckland Art Gallery, 1988
1988/1/1

Jim Allen – Toi Aotearoa

With our current collection exhibition Toi Aotearoa, I thought it worthwhile to generate on-going research about the artworks. As Jim Allen’s sculpture Polynesia is exhibited for the first time at the Gallery, I asked Jim to respond to some questions.


RB: When did you begin work on Polynesia?
JA: Polynesia was the stone carving component of my final year at Royal College of Art in 1951-52.

RB: Was this your first large scale direct stone carving?
JA: No, I had completed at least five others. The first carved in Oamaru limestone when I was a final year student at the School of Art, Canterbury University during 1948. At the Royal College, a bird shape in Hoptonwood marble, in private ownership in Auckland; a second bird shape in Alabaster, now in possession of Santa Barbara Art Gallery, California. There was also a boy figure in Portland limestone, since destroyed: and a horizontal figure in green Hornton stone.


RB: How did you choose the Ancaster limestone?
JA: I chose it in consultation with Barry Hart, our lecturer for stone carving. Barry was anxious that we had a broad experience of working of different kinds of stone. Occasionally we chose stone from the school's stockpile. Others, Barry would order in a special block. I think my Ancaster came within that category.

RB: Were there any preliminary drawings?
JA: No. I think I made a rudimentary clay figure maquette as a means of talking through my ideas, but we were encouraged with direct carving to working out the solution within the block itself.

RB: Is it an imagined figure or did you utilise a model to assist your work?
JA: No, definitely imagined. We were expected to carefully examine the block of stone and work out the disposition of shape accordingly.

RB: Did you physically carve it at the Royal College?
JA: Yes. In the studio designated for stone carving at the School of Sculpture.


RB: What was the reaction of staff and students to Polynesia?
JA: Very little from other students, all very much concerned with their own efforts and where they might come in the ensuing assessments. I am sure Barry Hart was pleased. I valued his advice, we became good friends over the three years, and we continued to keep in touch even after I had returned to NZ.

Barry came from generations of workers in stone, and was good friends with Henry Moore. He was something of a character, always wore a dark blue suit with bow tie. Never physically helped with your work and concentrated on working on the theory of working with the material and activating your own thinking processes in dealing with problems. Professor Frank Dobson and staff must have approved as I gained First Class Honours.

Images: Jim Allen, Polynesia, 1951
Ancaster limestone, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the artist, 2007

Colin McCahon

I have read Martin Edmond’s recent book Dark Night: Walking with McCahon again. It is an impressive book for two reasons – it is wonderfully personal and almost autobiographical in its take on McCahon’s life and work. It also reads like a parable paralleling the Stations of the Cross as a subject that McCahon thought much about over decades.

McCahon’s own voice is included and the selection of his comments affirms that he could really express his vision with words. You know that saying of his from 1972: I will need words. If you ever get to hear a recording of McCahon speaking you immediately understand that he was uber-articulate.

I reproduce the cover of Martin’s book because it includes a previously unknown image by Marti Friedlander of Colin’s studio. It is a portrait of the artist in absentia.

Dark Night: Walking with McCahon happened because of support from the Australia Council. Thanks to them for assisting a New Zealand writer to write about an artist who has one of their finest works in the National Gallery of Australia as a gift from the people of New Zealand: Victory over Death.

123 years ago ...

Poster advertising the opening of Auckland Free Public Library, 1887
E H McCormick Research Library, Archive Folder PH01/3

As we race towards the reopening of the Gallery this week, it’s hard not to think about how this building’s original opening day must have caused similar levels of excitement and anticipation.

Initially designed to accommodate Auckland’s public library, art gallery and municipal offices, the building’s first opening ceremony took place on 26 March 1887, when Auckland Public Library opened to a great deal of fanfare.

Sir George Grey, who was instrumental in the creation of both the Library and the Gallery, spoke at this event: ‘Often, worn out and tired, I have imagined when the day came how triumphant I should feel.’ (words which ring true to current Gallery staff!)

Unknown photographer, Sir George Grey c1863

Auckland Art Gallery opened nearly a year later, on 17 February 1888. In addition to the 14,000 books and manuscripts he had gifted for the establishment of the Public Library, Grey now donated his collection of paintings, which formed the basis of the Gallery’s permanent collection. These works hung behind Governor Sir William Jervois when he declared the Gallery open, saying:

‘I look forward to the day when this building will be too small for the Auckland Gallery of Art and the gifts of Sir George Grey and other generous people who have helped to form it... I doubt not, however, that for many a long year the fine structure in which we are assembled will afford ample space for the display of many works of art both of ancient and modern painters, which will be owned by the Municipality of Auckland.’

Josiah Martin, Auckland Free Library and Art Gallery 1887, Auckland Libraries, A11347

Jervois didn’t have to wait long for the day that the building was too small for the rapidly-growing Gallery. In 1888 it occupied a single room and was run by the city's Librarian, Edward Shillington, but by 1893 the first addition was built to house the Mackelvie Collection.

Over the past 123 years the Gallery has grown steadily, and its heritage building has grown and changed with it. In the 1880s, the opening of the Auckland Public Library and Art Gallery was seen to ‘mark an epoch in this city’s progress commercially, financially and intellectually’ – the current redevelopment project also shows us how far we have come since those early days.

Eye-opening experiences

Friend of the Gallery Warwick Brown shares his memories of the Gallery building in today's instalment of 'If these walls could talk...'

Having been born in 1940 I remember the Auckland City Art Gallery building when the southern end still housed the Old Colonists’ Museum and the library. The former was infrequently visited and the displays never changed. I often wonder what happened to the exhibits when this museum closed.

I visited the Art Gallery as a schoolboy, and it seemed very old-fashioned and atrophied to me. My earliest vivid memory is of the Henry Moore sculpture show in 1957. Moore was already my hero, and, as I had never seen a full-size piece, the maquettes on show seemed monumental to me. I spent hours at the exhibition and returned at least three times, jostling with the big crowds.

This experience was followed in 1958 by the excellent show of British art toured by the Arts Council of Great Britain. It was my first opportunity to view a body of modern work from outside New Zealand, and it further opened my eyes, as it did for many others.

Unknown photographer, Mackelvie Gallery Sculpture Court, 1953
silver gelatin print, E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Archive Folder PH 01/15

I remember the alterations done to create a mezzanine floor, the new curving staircase guarded at the bottom by a sculpture of a nude seated man, hands on knees. On that mezzanine I will never forget the wonderful show of big, fluted, painted canvas works by Don Peebles. They seemed to me then, and do still, to be works of international importance.

Of the many great experiences I have had in the gallery since, the two big McCahon retrospectives first come to mind. After studying the one in 1972 (Colin McCahon: A Survey Exhibition) on two occasions, I decided McCahon was an invention of the art critics, who were putting one across the public. Thankfully, by the time of the second one the scales had fallen from my eyes.

What else? Frank Womble’s fantastic Zpace Zhow of assemblages, paintings and collage in 1978. Gavin Chilcott’s wonderful painted dining room in the 1980s. The Boyle family’s reconstructions of reality in the 1990s. So much more.

Boyle Family, The Gisborne triptych, 1990
painted fibreglass, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1990

One thing I really miss is the annual show of emerging artists, drawn from around the country. To a young collector they were a great help. Why were they discontinued?

Warwick Brown

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

Documentation through Drawing

In 2009, artist Fiona Connor produced a series of drawings recording the demolition of the Gallery’s Edmiston Wing. The seven works in the Documentation through Drawing series were commissioned for Reading Room, the journal of art and culture published by the Gallery’s E.H. McCormick Research Library. They form a delicate and poetic response to the demolition of the Edmiston Wing, a part of the building that Connor had known since she was a child. The drawings are a personal record of a chapter in the Gallery’s life and Connor’s role as witness and documentarian.

With Documentation through Drawing, Connor explores the transience of things that seem permanent. She layers images to show time passing, and mirrors the cuts and perforations occurring in the Gallery’s architecture by physically cutting and removing sections of paper.

In this interview, Connor talked to me about her experience of making these beautiful and elegiac drawings:

What sparked your interest in this moment in the Gallery's life? Can you tell me how the project was initiated?

At the time I was working at the University of Auckland in the Classics and Ancient History Department and would visit Albert Park to eat my lunch. The demolition of the Edmiston Wing was incredible, like this sanctuary for art that I grew up with being deconstructed before my eyes! So I perched on the slope above the building site and took some pictures and made some drawings. Around the same I had a conversation with Sue Gardiner who encouraged me to push this further so I approached the Gallery and asked for access to the site which was granted on condition that I did a Site Safety Course.

Documentation through Drawing: Demolition at the Auckland Art Gallery 4, 2009

How do you use drawing in your practice, and what led you to use drawing as a method of documenting the demolition?

I was thinking a lot at the time about how photography gets used a trusted form of documentation but how drawing does not get used so much. I really enjoy drawing. For this series I would go really early in the morning to the building site. When I finished up I always had this feeling like: well what ever else is going to happen in the day I am already really satisfied. So nice to have this time to sit, watch and be in observation mode.

Can you describe how it felt to be in the partially-demolished building?

It was really energising to be amongst all the action. Sitting in the galleries watching these incredibly familiar surfaces (the brown tiles on the second floor, the carpeted stair case in the lobby, the Victorian architrave and fret work in the permanent collection) all being peeled back layer by layer to reveal their materiality. One morning I was sitting in one of the tiled galleries when the roof was ripped off and the ceiling became the gusty blue spring skies; it was like a perfect Situationist moment! Amazing. For me there was this lingering nostalgia for these times or moments in art history.

Documentation through Drawing: Demolition at the Auckland Art Gallery 5, 2009

I especially like how in one of the drawings you include the clock face in the Gallery's tower, and it shows two different times. Can you talk about how, rather than producing each drawing in one session, you returned to them at different times?

Most of these were done in one or two sittings because the site was changing so rapidly. Like I would do some drawing then come back and the spot that I had been sitting on was literally gone. Most of the drawings took about three hours which is about how long I can stay focused before I start sabotaging the work. This constraint of time and the materials I chose gives the series a consistency.

Documentation through Drawing: Demolition at the Auckland Art Gallery 1 2009

I think there is a sadness in the way that your drawings are so physically tangible, especially through the collage and cutout elements, but they show the building being demolished and physically removed. It's almost like they are fragile stand-ins for something that no longer exists. Do you think of them as melancholy?


That is funny for me I can’t remember any melancholy. When I made the cuts I was thinking about dealing with the paper as an architecture in itself.

Documentation through Drawing: Demolition at the Auckland Art Gallery 6 2009

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.”