Arts Centre

Arts Centre Site Remains Closed Following the Canterbury Earthquake of 22 February 2011

All 23 Arts Centre heritage buildings received significant damage in the earthquake and its subsequent aftershocks, and all have been issued with a red “Unsafe” placard.
As a result of the magnitude of this damage, the Arts Centre Trust Board— the body charged with ensuring this iconic precinct is preserved and protected in perpetuity— has taken the unprecedented step of closing the site for an indeterminate period to allow for remediation work and seismic strengthening to all buildings.  This work is likely to take several years.
The Trust Board has initiated this closure only after particular consideration of the significant impact this will have on the many businesses and worthy organisations that have been associated with this site for a large number of years.
The Board has been reluctant to take these measures.  However, the overriding considerations of:  public safety (current and future); uncertainty over the full extent of repair that is required; uncertainty about the total amount of funds available (for both restoration and strengthening work); and the ultimate need to prioritise funds toward those buildings with the most important heritage values has meant that the Board had little choice than to elect total closure for all buildings deemed unfit for occupation.  This determination recognises that some buildings— while suffering less damage than others— could still create a potential hazard either for occupants or restoration workers operating in the immediate proximity.
The site closure will also allow remediation work to proceed at the greatest pace possible, which will be of significant benefit to both the Arts Centre and the community at large.
Meantime, the Arts Centre site is considered unsafe to enter and remains cordoned off with access restricted to those persons working on stabilising the buildings under the direction of the consulting engineers.
Canterbury Cheesemongers continue to operate from the 'green stickered' Registry Additions Building at 301 Montreal Street.  www.cheesemongers.co.nz

Click on the links below to read recent articles published by The Press regarding the earthquake damage to our buildings.

New Zealand art and culture destinations

New Zealand artists and their works are receiving increasing recognition on the international stage.
Galleries around New Zealand hold exhibitions that feature the works of nationally and internationally acclaimed artists, as well as fresh, new talent.
Historical artworks are mostly held in the collections of the larger museums and public libraries in the main cities.
There are also more than 460 museums around the country, many doubling as art galleries, ranging from specialist regional collections to the impressive national museum Te Papa Tongarewa (Our Place) in Wellington.
NOTE: The Christchurch Art Gallery, historic Arts Centre and Canterbury Museum are closed to visitors until further notice.

New Zealand art galleries

Auckland Art Gallery
Wellesley / Kitchener streets, Auckland
Auckland Art Gallery houses New Zealand’s most significant collection of local and European art. Early New Zealand landscapes, as well as portraits of Māori people by Charles Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer, are of special interest. Opened in 1888, the Auckland Art Gallery was New Zealand’s first permanent art gallery. It holds more than 10,000 works in two buildings. The new gallery focuses on contemporary New Zealand art, and includes modernist artist Colin McCahon.
Gow Langsford Gallery
Kitchener / Wellesley streets, Auckland
Opposite the Auckland Art Gallery, the Gow Langsford Gallery exhibits both contemporary New Zealand paintings and sculpture, as well as international works.
Lopdell House Gallery
Titirangi / South Titirangi roads, Waitakere City, Auckland
The Lopdell House Gallery, about 35mins from central Auckland, is a public art gallery that presents annually about 10 exhibitions of contemporary New Zealand art. The gallery also profiles local artists who are of national significance, and is situated in the scenic Waitakere Ranges.
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
Queen Street, New Plymouth
Opened in 1970, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery was New Zealand’s first contemporary art gallery. The Govett-Brewster has a permanent collection that includes an internationally significant collection of works by Len Lye.
National Library Gallery
Molesworth / Aitken streets, Thorndon, Wellington
Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa / the National Library of New Zealand is located opposite New Zealand's Parliament Buildings, and is one of the country’s leading cultural and information centres. As well as library material, there are public exhibitions of heritage collections. Murals and works of art from the library’s contemporary art collection are also on show.
Wellington City Gallery
Civic Square, Wellington
Wellington's City Gallery has forged a reputation for challenging and innovative exhibitions of art, architecture and design, presenting significant New Zealand artists alongside major international figures. It is closed for a major renovation, and due to reopen in spring 2009.
Dowse Art Museum
35 Laings Road, Lower Hutt
The Dowse Art Museum holds more than 20 exhibitions a year covering New Zealand and overseas crafts. Six separate gallery spaces, including a large museum wing, cater for a diverse array of exhibition content - ceramics, glass, textiles, wood, metal and furniture, photography and paintings.
Grove Mill Winery
Waihopai Valley Rd, Marlborough
The Grove Mill Winery art gallery is set in magnificent scenery adjacent to a natural wetlands, home to southern bell frogs, pukekos and shags.
Arts Centre of Christchurch [CLOSED]
2 Worcester Boulevard, Christchurch
Located in the historic Gothic revival buildings of the original Canterbury University, the Christchurch Arts Centre is a significant cultural attraction. It offers more than 40 craft studios, galleries and shops, theatres, cinemas, cafes, restaurants and bars and weekend markets. The centre is home to Te Toi Mana Gallery, a cooperative of Māori and Pacific artists. This is the site where Ernest Rutherford (a renowned New Zealand scientist, the father of nuclear physics) studied and conducted early experiments.
Christchurch Art Gallery - Te Puna o Wai Whetu [CLOSED]
Rolleston Avenue, ChristchurchChristchurch Art Gallery is housed in a visually dramatic purpose-built neo classical / art deco building in the Botanic Gardens. Collections include works of historical European art, 20th century New Zealand and contemporary painting.
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
30 The Octagon, Dunedin
Dunedin Public Art Gallery was founded in 1884 by William Mathew Hodgkins - cultural activist, artist, and father of famous New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins. It houses an important collection of New Zealand works from 1860 until modern day, including works by Frances Hodgkins. The gallery also has significant holdings of historical European art, Japanese prints, and decorative arts.

New Zealand museums

Te Papa Tongarewa - Musuem of New Zealand
Cable Street, Wellington
New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, opened in 1998 on Wellington's waterfront. The museum, a celebration of New Zealand’s identity - the people, culture and environment, features hi-tech and traditional displays. As well as significant collections of New Zealand art, the 16,000-plus taonga / treasures looked after by Te Papa are the largest Māori collection in any museum and cover a broad spectrum of Māori art and culture, from revered and significant cultural heirlooms through to humble everyday items dating from early pre-European times to today.
Auckland War Memorial Museum
Auckland Domain, AucklandAuckland Museum is one of New Zealand’s best-known historic buildings. The war memorial reflects on New Zealand’s part in the wars of the world, while the museum provides a window on cultural and natural history including a fine collection of Māori treasures and Polynesian artefacts.
Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT)
Great North Road, Western Springs, Auckland
MOTAT - Museum of Transport and Technology - opened in 1964, and is the largest museum of transport, technology and social history in New Zealand. It houses a number of outstanding collections.
New Zealand National Maritime Museum
Quay / Hobson streets, Auckland
The National Maritime Museum celebrates New Zealand’s maritime heritage and the voyaging traditions and craft of the Pacific. Galleries tell the story of peoples whose lives were forever linked to the sea. In Māori, its name is Te Huiteananui-a-Tangaroa, the legendary house belonging to Tangaroa, Māori god of the sea.
Rotorua Museum of Art and History
Te Whare Taonga o Te ArawaRotorua Museum occupies a distinctivee tudor style building near the shores of Lake Rotorua. The original bathhouse building, that first opened in 1908, houses many significant Māori taonga / treasures that are of national and international historical significance. It also holds a fine arts collection and a photographic collection containing more than 70,000 photographic images depicting Rotorua's past.
Taupo District Museum of Art & History
Story Place, Taupo
Three art galleries house the Taupo Museum's art collection and changing art exhibitions. For the dedicated angler, the main exhibition hall displays permanent small exhibitions on trout fishing and Lake Taupo charter boats. There is an Early Settlers exhibition, and the Nga Taonga Maori room houses carvings and Maori artefacts. The grounds include a recreation of New Zealand's Chelsea Flower Show (2004) award-winning '100% Pure New Zealand Ora - garden of wellbeing'.
Hawke's Bay Museum
Herschell Street / Marine Parade, Napier
A combined museum and art gallery, the Hawke's Bay Museum has a broad collection with a special emphasis on Hawke's Bay history, especially the 1931 earthquake, as well as historical and contemporary art.
Canterbury Museum [CLOSED]
Rolleston Avenue, Christchurch
Canterbury Museum is a major New Zealand regional museum that holds almost two million collection items. The collections cover a wide range of topics including Canterbury’s first people, the moa hunter Māori and their descendants, the European settlers' cultural and economic development and local history. Highlights include the Mountfort Gallery of European Decorative Arts and Costume. The Museum is adjacent to the Botanic Gardens, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, and the Arts Centre.
Otago Museum
419 Great King Street, Dunedin
Otago Museum contains comprehensive displays of Māori and Pacific heritage, especially Southern Māori culture. There is an excellent New Zealand natural history collection - from penguins to the extinct giant moa, fish, birds and insects.
Southland Museum and Art Gallery
Queens Park, 108 Gala Street, Invercargill
Southland Museum and Art Gallery is located in the largest pyramid building in the southern hemisphere.The musuem has one of the largest living collections of tuatara in its highly successful breeding facility.

Artists » Glen Wolfgramm

Glen Wolfgramm was born in Auckland in 1971. Of Tongan and Irish descent, he is self-taught, his paintings conveying echoes of both the Pacific, and some space-age, futuristic world existing now only in our imaginations, nurtured by the world of sci fi movies. Wolfgramm has been exhibiting since 1998, was a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards in 2000 and was selected to represent New Zealand at the 2000 Biennale d’Art Contemporain in Noumea, alongside Michael Parekowhai and Lisa Reihana.
‘Wolfgramm views every painting as “a chapter, a verse, a voice that is passing the experience of my forebears to me and through me and on, out into the wide world”; like emissaries, Wolfgramm’s paintings themselves migrate, voyaging out into the world and carrying their stories with them.’ (Orex Gallery website, 2011)
The paintings that are still available are marked as such in the title.  For enquiries, please contact Rex at Orexart – link below.
GALLERY
Orex Gallery, Auckland
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TJ McNamara, Auckland’s Brand of art Flourishing, NZ Herald, B/5 26/07/07 with photograph, 2007
Art New Zealand Today, ed. Liz Caughey, Saint Publishing, Auckland, 2002
TJ McNamara, Critics Choice, NZHerald, B/12 30/10/00, 2000
Peter Simpson, Revue, Sunday Star Times, F4, 19/3/00, 2000
Aotearoa Pasifika: Three New Zealand Artists, Professor Peter Simpson, State of the Arts (Australia/New Zealand) Feb/March 2000
‘The Promoter: Something New Something Spiky’, Ken Cooke, Art New Zealand No. 93 Summer 1999/00
T.J. McNamara, Weekend Books & Art, NZHerald, H7 9-10/5/98
Auckland Aesthetics, Andrew Frost, Australian Art Collector, No.6, 1998

Artists » Christine Webster

CHRISTINE WEBSTER, born in Pukekohe. 1982, 84, 88 QEII Arts Council Grant. 1989 Polaroid Small Projects Grant, Offenbach am Main, Germany. 1991 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, UO, Dunedin. 1994 Acting HOD, ASA SoA, Auckland. 1995 part-time tutor, ASA SoA. Arts Council Toi Aotearoa Fellowship, Auckland. 1996-97 part-time tutor, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland. 1996 CNZ Professional Development Grant. 1997 CNZ Arts Development Grant. 2003 July-October, MFA Exchange, Elam SoFA, UA. 2002-04 MFA, Glasgow SoA, Glasgow. 2004 appointed Course Leader, BA (Hons) Photography, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Lives in UK.
Christine Webster’s photography is based on fiction rather than documentary. It unsettles and disturbs with its probing into society’s accepted boundaries. Her interest lies in working with others to explore the human psyche – people’s different personae, fantasy, identity, gender stereotypes and sexuality. Webster’s models take on new personae to challenge viewers to untangle their entrenched thoughts on (often) moralistic situations. The subjects in her photographs boldly meet the viewer’s eyes in an overt departure from the traditionally averted gaze of women portrayed in paintings of yesteryear. The images are reminiscent of movie stills, in that the image captured seems to be just one moment stolen from a much longer ‘story’. Webster is intrigued by ‘the human condition’, by the universal anxieties that beset us and by the veiled layers of people’s identities.
In the late 1980s, Webster’s series ‘New Myths’ focussed on a questioning of the balance of power in sexual relationships and this evolved in the early 90’s into an exposition of the historical connections between violence and sex, using a male nude model to counter the traditional art historical depiction of the female nude. In 1994, Webster staged a landmark exhibition with her ‘Black Carnival’ works – 60 lineal metres of life-sized cibachromes that surrounded and confronted the viewer from the gallery walls. Their sheer size was daunting, reversing the usual ‘viewer/subject’ roles, and the content offered little comfort, depicting masked or disguised men and women in roles that brought the viewer face to face with scenes contrary to society’s ‘norms’ – a pregnant woman dressed in just a tutu; a male nude half-dressed in a bridal gown; a nude woman wearing a bunny head. Webster seems to specialise in showing us images that we don’t expect to see, and that are likely to discomfit us when we meet them.
Over subsequent series her themes included sexual fantasy (Possession & Mirth), transcendence – in a series working with New Zealand dancer and choreographer Douglas Wright (Circus of Angels), a study of the male/female (photographs of boxers and fabric) (Quiet), and a capturing of the total and innocent abandon that sleep brings in photographs of her baby son, in a ‘take’ on traditional portraiture and with an echo of the reverence of historical, religious paintings (Fugue).
For more information, go to www.christinewebster.co.uk – Webster’s excellent site with images from all series, CV and numerous essays.


LINKS
. Christine Webster artist website with images from all series, CV and more
. Christine Webster page of photographs from ‘The Hunt, The Seduction, The Kill: a play of desire’
. Christine Webster essay on exhibition of photographs of Douglas Wright, 2002, University of NSW site
. Christine Webster biography and 2 images on PhotoForum site
. Christine Webster review on e-zine ‘NZ Art Monthly’ of ‘Quiet’ exhibition, Adam Art Gallery, 2004


GALLERIES
To be advised


SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Art New Zealand 29 ‘Christine Webster’s Large Colour Photographs’, Sheridan Keith, 1983
New Zealand Artists: A Survey of 150 Years’, Anne Kirker, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1992
Art New Zealand 68 ‘Process… Procession…Possession -Christine Webster’s Black Carnival’, Ewen McDonald, 1993
Art New Zealand 83 ‘Circus of Angels – Recent Work by Christine Webster’, Sarah Gibson, 1997
Contemporary New Zealand Art 4, Elizabeth Caughey & John Gow, Bateman, 2005

Artists » John Walsh

  JOHN WALSH
Aitanga a Hauiti/New Zealand IrishBorn 1954 in Tolaga Bay. 1973-74 attended Ilam SoFA, CU.
After his first solo exhibition held when he was almost 40 (his earlier works having been exhibited mainly around his home territory of Gisborne and the East Coast region of New Zealand), John Walsh quickly made a name for himself and now exhibits annually in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Mainly self-taught, Walsh’s earliest works took the form of realist portraits of people he knew on the East Coast, executed in the hours when he was not working in various casual, seasonal employments.
In 1989, Walsh was invited to participate in an international mural project in New York and after returning to NZ, worked in a number of tertiary institutions. In 1993, he moved with his family to Wellington to an appointment as curator of contemporary Maori art at the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) and it was around this time that he arrived at the artistic style for which he is so well-known now. The first such paintings tended to be small and painted on wash backgrounds but as the scale of the works increased, Walsh introduced landscape to the imagery. Some works re-present myths from Maoridom while others depict contemporary incidents he has observed in the newspapers or personally. The protagonists in Walsh’s paintings are often depicted with human bodies and faces of ancestral tikis or manaia (helpers and bringers of knowledge) or as marahikau (mermen). His work is typified by a gentle humour, and a playful interpretation of circumstances.


DEALERS
John Leech Gallery, Auckland
Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch. Ph: 03-366 5288


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Contemporary New Zealand Art 4, Elizabeth Caughey and John Gow, David Bateman Ltd, 2005.
Te Ata: Maori Art from the East Coast, Witi Ihimaera & Ngarina Ellis (editors), Reed Publishing, Auckland, 2002.
Te Maunga Taranaki: Views of a Mountain, exhibition catalogue, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Publications, 2001.
Parihaka: the Art of Passive Resistance, Te Miringa Hohaia, Gregory O’Brien, Lara Strongman (editors). Published for exhibition at City Gallery Wellington/Parihaka Pa Trustees/Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2000.
Nanny Mango, Te Papa Press. Written and illustrated by John Walsh.
North and South, ‘Pathfinder Painter’, Sheridan Gundry, July 1997.
Mataora, Sandy Adsett, Cliff Whiting (general editors), Witi Ihimaera (editor), David Bateman Ltd, 1996.
The Arts in Aotearoa New Zealand, Peter Beatson, Dianne Beatson (editors), 1994.