In Shifting Light: McCahon's Urewera Triptych

Colin McCahon, Urewera Triptych 1975, acrylic on cotton duck, on loan from the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai

Auckland Art Gallery MEDIA RELEASE

For immediate release: 9 October 2008

Colin McCahon’s infamous Urewera Triptych will be on display – for the first time since it was demounted from the Aniwaniwa Visitor Centre late last year – as part of the gallery’s latest exhibition In Shifting Light.

Auckland Art Gallery is caring for McCahon’s mural while the visitors centre in Te Urewera National Park undergoes renovation work. The mural was last displayed at Auckland Art Gallery in what was then known as "The McCahon Room" at the New Gallery in 1999.

Don’t miss your chance to see this important New Zealand artwork on display as part of an exhibition that looks at how artists have responded to our country’s landscapes.

In Shifting Light offers visitors fresh ways to understand how artists have interpreted New Zealand landscapes – as sites of social and personal experiences. As such, the artists in this exhibition have chosen to rewrite, deconstruct or describe various landscapes and their/our place within it.

This collection-based exhibition, curated by Ron Brownson, brings together 40 works across a variety of medium including a poignant Ans Westra photograph taken at the Early Settlers Museum in Dunedin, the mysterious video and CAD topographies of Mladen Bizumic and paintings by Charles Goldie, Ralph Hotere, as well as Colin McCahon. These works reflect landscapes as sites through which to define ourselves as a people and place – light and darkness conveys the spiritual and emotional responses to these sites.

In Shifting Light presents art works from the historic, modern and contemporary parts of the gallery’s New Zealand collection and explores how the notion of landscape has evolved.

High resolution images are available on the Auckland Art Gallery’s press page: www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/press Please ensure all images are correctly credited.

In Shifting Light
11 October 2008 to 12 April 2009
Auckland Art Gallery, New Gallery
Free admission

ENDS

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