By Sheyne Tuffery
Wellington’s City Gallery is situated in one of the best outdoor sites in the CBD – Civic Square – that shares a doormat with the nikau palm-themed central library, the council building and the town hall.
The City Gallery, formerly Wellington’s central library, reopened late last year after it went under the knife for a $6.3m refurbishment. It came out the other side looking slick and spacious.
It was a great move to forgo knocking the old girl down, especially as architecture in the late 1980s and early 1990s was having an identity crisis with all its naff windows, sheet metal and steel poles.
This architecture is timeless, and its grand Greco-Roman structure has been kept completely intact, with the inside filleted well enough to make a good parking space for Thunderbird 2.
The City Gallery’s purpose is to show contemporary visual art from all corners of the globe, and to celebrate Aotearoa’s finest exponents of the genre.
There are five gallery spaces, which are an incredible way to get your art fix in a few hours. All exhibitions were free for the festival season, which was a bonus, and the way it should be when celebrating our own artist’s achievements.
The first exhibition on the list was Trans-Form: The Abstract Art of Milan Mrkusich. One of New Zealand’s leading minimalist/abstract painters of last century, Mrkusich’s work is of the original old school of painters – part of a worldwide movement of abstraction and minimalism dedicated to finding truth and meaning through purity of colour and harmony.
This was in no way a retrospective show of Mrkusich, more a selection of his work from the early 1960s up to his most recent. It was a very exclusive show as the works were drawn from private collections and have never before been exhibited publicly. His paintings are contemplative and reflective,with a quiet resonance that has a real grandeur about it.
Upstairs was the main event, Séraphine Pick’s first survey exhibition. When approaching Seraphines work a little tingle ran through my system in anticipation of seeing some fine, big, New York-style paintings with lots of figurative compositions. And by jingo, by crikey, I got body-slammed with a plethora of glorious artworks.
This was the touring exhibition from the Christchurch Art Gallery, and even though it’s a big show this was apparently only half of it.
This is visual art in the unbeatable mould of solid technique, complex composition and sprinkles of mystery. But, underlying all of this is the passion… the passion and drive to paint… the will to express oneself. Not because you want to, but because you have to. There’s no choice in the matter.
This gene separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the real visual artists, and Séraphine has it in spades.
The show was well thought out in what it had on display, with four different rooms to underline the shifts in style, size and various subject matters over the past 15 years.
It traced the artist’s ongoing explorations into the imaginative realm, of identity, memory and sexuality, and unveiled several new works.
The standouts for me were the Looking like Someone Else series of portraits, where the randomness of the subjects was out of control. The group of small paintings wove between the styles of Toulouse-Lautrec, 1980s Goth, muted chic (if there is such a thing) and weirdo David Lynch-inspired stills from the elephant man.
From the big pieces I couldn’t go past her recent Wandering Rose and Burning the Furniture; sublimely cantankerous painting that you want in your lounge.
In the gallery by the front desk was a sound installation called The Forty-Part Motet (2001) by Canadian artist Janet Cardiff. This was an immersive sculpturally conceived sound piece, in which forty separately recorded voices played back through forty speakers to make up an early renaissance piece of classical music. It was very cinematic and deeply moving.
In the Hirschfeld Gallery was a group show of Wellington artists called Further Convictions Pending by Andrew Beck, Sarah Maxey, Douglas Stichbury and Tim Thatcher. This was an exhibition heavy in dark and muted meanings; it had a very muddy early 90's style about it.
The Deane Gallery, which specialises in showing contemporary Maori and Pacific art, is showing Tino Rangatira Tanga by Leilani Kake until 13 June. Kake utilises narratives taken directly from her personal life to commenton larger issues facing Maori and Pacific Island communities living in Aotearoa New Zealand.
A show you do not want to miss is John Pule: Hauaga (Arrivals) at City Gallery from the 29 May – 12 September, his first major solo exhibition in a public gallery. Pule is one of New Zealand’s most respected and important artists, and this exhibition promises to be a landmark survey of his work.
As promised, the ‘concrete canvas’ series starts this issue celebrating Wellington’s street murals. I drive past this beauty every day, which is on Victoria Street. (Opposite Page)
If you see any cool murals or great street art around, drop me a line at feedback@fishhead.co.nz ATTN: ART SNORKEL.
Picture: Seraphine Pick's Wandering Rose 2008. Oil on Linen. Private collection. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.