Current & Forthcoming Exhibitions

www.city-gallery.org.nz

TELECOM PROSPECT 2001 - NEW ART NEW ZEALAND ART 12 April - 1 July 2001 www.newartnz.org.nz The exhibition is a survey of the most innovative artwork produced by 34 New Zealand artists in the last three years, says inaugural curator Lara Strongman. "I've chosen artists who have made, or who are likely to make, a major impact on the thinking and identity of our time."

Senior artists - such as Ralph Hotere, Richard Killeen, Gretchen Albrecht and Bill Hammond - are showing alongside emerging talent, some of whom have never previously shown in a public gallery. Andrew Thomas, a 22 year old Wellington photographic artist, is the youngest contributor. Other exciting younger artists include Kirsty Gregg, Hannah and Aaron Beehre, Michael Parekowhai and Ani O'Neill. The exhibition includes works in a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, time-based arts, photography, installation, printmaking, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Artists from as far afield as Invercargill and Russell are featured. The exhibition has its own online catalogue: www.newartnz.org.nz

RITA ANGUS - 'LIVE TO PAINT AND PAINT TO LIVE' 7 July - 16 September 2001

This is the first exhibition of the work of New Zealand artist Rita Angus since 1982. The exhibition brings together three aspects of Angus' oeuvre. The largest section of the show, '23 Self Portraits', focuses on Angus' self-portraiture and is curated by Vita Cochran. In the second, Peter Simpson examines links between Rita Angus, writer Lawrence Baigent and artist Leo Bensemann, who lived and worked together. Angus and Bensemann painted each other as subjects.

For the City Gallery exhibition, Vita Cochran will include 'Rita Angus's Wellington'. This exhibition includes around 25 Wellington paintings including a number of works that have been rarely and in some cases never exhibited before. The artist lived in Wellington from 1954 until her death in 1970. Based in Sydney St West, Thorndon, she painted some of the most iconic images of this city and the surrounding region. Angus's most loved paintings, View from Tinakori Road, Journey (Wellington), Flight and Boats, Island Bay are included.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a book entitled Rita Angus; 'Live to paint and paint to live', published by Hocken Library, Dunedin; City Gallery Wellington; and Godwit Publishers. Rita Angus is one of the most loved of New Zealand's artists, yet it is 20 years since a book devoted to her work appeared. This publication explores the relationship between her life and the artworks to which she was so committed.

At the core of Angus's oeurvre is a series of iconic self-portraits - some of them realistic, others surreal or even mystical. A generous selection of these extraordinary works is complemented by important examples of her landscape and still life work to create a rounded portrait of the artist and her world. The book will feature 24 full page colour reproductions, and black and white illustrations, and and essays from art historian Jill Trevelyan and curator of '23 Self Portraits' and 'Rita Angus's Wellington', Vita Cochran. Rita Angus; 'Live to paint and paint to live will be a significant contribution to New Zealand art history as there has been no recent scholarly discussion of Angus' work. A joint project between City Gallery Wellington and the Hocken Library, University of Otago. Sponsored by Russell McVeagh. Generously supported by Creative New Zealand.

GAVIN HIPKINS - THE HOMELY 7 July - 16 September 2001

This artist's project initiated by City Gallery, Wellington, will show recent photographic work by the Wellington based artist and university lecturer Gavin Hipkins. Exhibiting regularly throughout New Zealand and internationally, Hipkins has emerged in the 1990s as one of New Zealand's foremost young photographers. He was included in the Sydney Biennale of 1998 and his programme for this year includes 'Arte 2000, 16 artists from 16 countries' in Turin, Italy.

The City Gallery project, The Homely, cites a history of New Zealand and Australia by re-presenting elements that have been used to define nationhood(s) and historical folklore. As well as imaging colonial links to the late British Empire, The Homely explores the ongoing attempt by Pakeha to define their nativeness, and in so doing, to call their country 'home'. Themes of Western suburbanisation, Catholicism and Americanism are explored in the latter part of the show.

The Homely is envisaged as a photographic frieze with images, or cultural fragments, sitting close to each other - relying on each other - for narrative thread. Images of museums, war memorials, statues and parts of paintings are part of this narrative. While many photographs have their place of origin in domestic settings, The Homely also ventures away from the domestic to explore the representation of New Zealand as an apparent natural paradise. A New Zealand Artist Project commissioned by City Gallery Wellington. Generously supported by Creative New Zealand.

ERIKA-A PORTRAIT BY PETER PERYER 13 July - 16 September 2001

This exhibition presents images from the one of the most sustained and fascinating episodes of portraiture in New Zealand photography. In the late '70s and early '80s, renowned photographer Peter Peryer made numerous emotionally charged images of his wife Erika-the exhibition presents this photographic essay for the first time.

A major survey of Peter Peryer's career-Second Nature-toured New Zealand and Germany in 1995-1996. Erika concentrates on one facet of Peryer's multi-faceted career in which Peryer accomodates an expressionist painterly tradition within the traditions of documentary photography. In the vein of international artists such as Edward Weston and Nicholas Nixon who have also focused their camera's eye on their wives or partners, the images partake of and adapt a much-debated tradition of the female subject as muse and poetic object. A Dunedin Public Art Gallery Touring Exhibition.

A TOURIST IN PARADISE LOST: THE ART OF MICHAEL ILLINGWORTH 13 July - 28 October 2001

Michael Illingworth is something of an enigma in New Zealand art history: a well-respected modernist painter about whom very little is known or recorded. Although Illingworth's emblematic figurative paintings are featured in all major New Zealand public art collections, and have been collected by many private patrons, there has been no published research on his work. As part of its commitment to further scholarship into key figures of New Zealand art, the City Gallery will commission leading younger curators Damian Skinner and Aaron Lister to curate this important survey exhibition designed to bring Illingworth's work to public prominence. The exhibition will explore Illingworth's images of suburbia and the social context of his work, placing this idiosyncratic figure into the canon of New Zealand art history. The exhibition will feature a publication of the same name, and will be offered for tour to major New Zealand venues. Sponsored by Ernst & Young. Generously supported by Creative New Zealand.

360/Michael Hirschfeld Gallery

OLD GATES NEW JOURNEYS: Five Photographers 11 May - 10 June 2001 Wayne Barrar, Janet Bayly, Ben Cauchi, Andrew Ross, and Alexandra Simms. A group exhibition of established and emerging Wellington photographers.

MICHAEL NICHOLSON 15 June - 15 July 2001 An installation by Michael Nicholson including video work.

RATED New Work by Wayne Youle 20 July - 19 August 2001 Photography by emerging artist Wayne Youle (Ngapuhi / Ngati Whakaeke) which tests the limits of acceptable visual culture. (R18).

JULIET PETER 24 August - 23 September 2001 Juliet Peter, a friend of Rita Angus and contemporary of Janet Paul, exhibits lithographs, paintings and illustrations from local collections.

City Gallery Wellington is open 10am-5pm daily (except Christmas Day). Admission free. Information line: 04 801 3952. www.city-gallery.org.nz

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