Keeping Time
To: Arts Editor/Features Editor
From:
Linda Harrison - CCC Communications Team
MEDIA RELEASE 20 June 2008
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Keeping Time
Exploring the moment when past and present collide, Keeping Time considers how history, memory and tradition frame and colour our experience of the world. Drawn from the Gallery’s permanent collection, the works in this exhibition measure time, but also preserve it, documenting our journey towards the future and the baggage we pick up along the way.
Taking centre stage is Denis O’Connor’s monumental limestone sculpture The Gorse King. This 33-piece, semi-autobiographical work brings together an intriguing group of objects including classical columns, beehives, railway tracks, a sundial and a fragmented kneeling figure. “With them, O’Connor uncovers a rich seam of densely layered imagery, from childhood memories and the Central Otago landscape to ancient history and twentieth century art,” according to Curator Felicity Milburn.
Also included in the
exhibition are five stunning Marian Maguire lithographs
re-imagining Homer’s Odyssey in the context of the South
Pacific, Michael Shepherd’s Dead Letter Mail, a series of
painted envelopes ‘posted’ from the past to enigmatic
and elusive addresses, and William Dunning’s waxwork-like
Colonization Triptych, in which Giovanni Bellini’s 15th
century Transfiguration of Christ is transformed into a
tableau of significant moments in Māori/Pākehā
history.
Keeping Time will be at the Christchurch Art
Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu until 31 August
2008.
ends