Compiler

Te Aue Davis, assisted by Bill Solomon, Kaitaka, [Kakahu/cloak], muka, dye from tanekaha, raurëkau. Photo Norman  Heke. In the exhibition Toi Maori: The eternal thread, a celebration of Maori weaving at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu until 27 May. [See last month’s Artnotes NZ]

In and around

Zero Fictions
Fictions is a group show at the 64zero3 Gallery in Christchurch, featuring Liyen Chong, Paul Johns, and Wayne Youle among others, and curated by Andrew Paul Wood; from 3 to 28 April. This gallery just keeps coming up with great shows and interesting artists and I’m sure this will be well worth a visit.

Drawing that works
Sarah Munro, 2006 Francis Hodgkins Fellow, will showing Working drawings at the Hocken Collections, Dunedin, from 30 March to 26 May. Munro’s beautifully constructed sculptures and paintings question the role of the machine as artist, and these new works pose questions of the work of art as a machine-like device.

Neil Emmerson in New Zealand
New Zealand is delighted to welcome Neil Emmerson to our shores. Emmerson has recently crossed the ditch to take up a post as Head of the Print Studio at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art and is staging a solo show at the Blue Oyster Gallery in Dunedin, his debut in New Zealand. (Are We There Yet?) will occupy all three gallery spaces and provide challenging juxtapositions of mediated war imagery, gay spaces in a heterosexual world, and clashes between the natural and urban. The show runs from 17 April to 5 May.  

Eternal Threads

The Christchurch City Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu is hosting more than thirty events to coincide with the homecoming of Toi Maori: The eternal thread. Highlights include an evening with Keri Hulme, New Zealand’s only Booker Prize winner, and contemporary applications of traditional Ta Moko (tattooing). The show itself contains both traditional and contemporary kakahu (cloaks), whariki (floor mats), tukutuku (wall panels), and kete (finely woven baskets). Until 27 May 2007, for listings of events go to: www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

Dunedin gets Another view

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery is showing photographic work from the Seresin Family Collection. Another view offers a rare opportunity to see some of the most famous images in photographic history in the original black and white print format. The photographers include some of the best-known names from early to mid-twentieth century, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Eugene Atget, W Eugene Smith, Man Ray, Bill Brandt, and G H Brassai.. This collection provides an intensely beautiful encapsulation of modernist photography’s key styles. From 31 March to 13 May… The gallery will also be playing host to Simon Denny, who recombines humble materials in precarious, witty and poetic ways. He’s an artist with a light touch, whose recent works include ‘abstracts’ held to the wall by nothing more than static electricity, and constructions that teeter elegantly on the brink of collapse. Most recently featured in Prospect 2007 at City Gallery Wellington, Denny is the first of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Visiting Artists for 2007. Until 4 June.

Festival of Colour

If anyone ever needed a reason to visit Wanaka, which you don’t, the Festival of Colour would provide it; it runs from 24 to 29 April and features numerous events and happenings… Michel Tuffery returns to Wanaka with a giant pod installation, First contact, which by day is a startling sculpture, but by night is peopled by projections and sound. He is also linking in the work of some local primary school students. Tuffery works with a multi-media team featuring VJ Mike Busy and DJ Anton Carter; you’ll know the pod when you see it! ... Lonnie Hutchison works with black building paper and scissors; her eye-catching cutouts will be shown in the windows of the Infinity Building, along with the work of local students. She has recently returned from a residency and exhibition in Santiago, Chile. Lonnie is of Ngai Tahu Maori affiliation, also Samoan, and her work often pays homage to Pacific and Maori designs, exploring the subtle power and interplay of pattern, light and shadow… Earth from above - the Wanaka lake front will transform into a giant twenty-four-hour gallery with this renowned international photographic exhibition. Experience the world from a new viewpoint through 120 large-scale aerial photographs; from spectacular glaciers to a market garden in Timbuktu, photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has captured an incredible variety of landscapes from the air. The visually stunning, large-scale images (1.8m x 1.2m) are also a report on the state of the planet, revealing the ‘human footprint’ made in the name of progress. Earth from Above is both a celebration of diversity and a chance to contemplate the future. Fourteen years in the making, the exhibition has been seen in London, Montreal, Moscow, Melbourne and Wellington. It is an aerial portrait of our planet towards sustainable development. For complete listings go to: www.festivalofcolour.co.nz