Christchurch Art Gallery's News and Blogs

Call us if it's you

We love the MyGallery sets that have been created recently.

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Gnome Army

Take the innocence of the kitsch garden gnome then arm it to the teeth!

 

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Watch for me by moonlight

Guilty pleasures come in forms other than reality TV, so here's my tribute to that rollicking narrative poem 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes and the recent perigee moon, thanks to the CAG collection and swashbuckling street artist Banksy.

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Demo Town

Demolition of Christchurch's CBD has really stepped up over the past few months with whole blocks transforming into vast wastelands...

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A Better View

Last Saturday, ten helpful people from the Student Volunteer Army improved the view of Wayne Youle's mural in Sydenham.

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Halswell that ends well

This term while Susie is off in Singapore for six weeks at the Asian Civilisations Museum, I have the pleasure of taking the Gallery's education programme out to schools around Christchurch.

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Old materials - new ideas

Rugged, recycled and right here!

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Multi-tasking god

The Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore is packed with interesting artifacts, but to me the most beautiful things are the statues that depict deities from different religions.

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Brooklands

The destruction of the city centre is receiving lots of attention, but there are of course whole suburbs that will soon disappear as well.

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Further North

Continuing down the recently reopened Madras Street and drawing tenuous links to works from our collection (!), I've always been a sucker for a good gargoyle.

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Jekyll and Hyde

Jason's Greig's exhibition The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde is currently on show at the Ashburton Art Gallery and it's well worth the drive from Christchurch.

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Hapless Spirits

On this day in 1828 the artist Nicholas Chevalier was born.

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It's Boy George!

Gallery Guides' Supervisor Rebecca Ogle and her son George were the stars at a morning tea/brunch hosted by the Guides at Meshino Café in St Albans last Friday.

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'Dropp!' into the Gallery Shop

Something new from the designers of our very popular rubber vases.

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When it feels like curtains...

Well, yes, sometimes it can. In which case, you need to find ways - maybe even work harder than you've ever had to do before - of staying hopeful.

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Quake brain, van der Velden-style

As might be expected, the Gallery's collection is primarily made up of complete works; prepared, resolved and sent on their way, as ready as they'll ever be for public exposure.

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Going home in the dark

On a balmy night last week Nathan Pohio and myself were making our way home through the city streets only to be greeted by this great big backlit monolith being torn apart by a nibbler.  

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Angels and Aristocrats

Blair Jackson and I attended the opening of Angels & Aristocrats at Dunedin Public Art Gallery on Friday 27 April. It's spectacular.

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One way traffic

Madras Street is open again! And we're very pleased about that, as the front door to our Outer Spaces gallery upstairs at NG happens to be on the one-way heading north, so it's even easier for you to get there and see Breathing Space.

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Leo Bensemann's centenary

Today is the centenary of the birth of Canterbury artist Leo Bensemann and Peter Simpson, Leo's biographer, has contributed an insightful article on the Christchurch Art Gallery's collection of Leo Bensmann's work which you can read here. 

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Tea Mr Shifter?

Gallery staff shifted back into their offices this week. We'll be shifting again soon, but that's another whole story.

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Happy Birthday Frances Hodgkins

Our final birthday for April is Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947)

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Singapore sling

Our colleague Susie Cox is currently working in Singapore.

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People in glasshouses

A few days ago, there were lots of little bits of glass and metal strewn (in a highly systematic way) across the floor of our NG gallery space.

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Attack of the Stymphalian birds

"Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks" said the American news journalist Eric Sevareid (1912 - 1992).

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Becordel AD1916

The Canterbury artist Archibald Nicoll enlisted with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in December 1914 and arrived at the front lines of the Battle of the Somme on the 20th August 1916 as a member of the NZEF's 4th Reinforcements Field Artillery Unit.

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Mona

Even while on holiday in Melbourne and Tasmania recently, I couldn't help myself visiting galleries and museums.

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Artists in Crime

That was the title the great Christchurch-born mystery writer Ngaio Marsh gave to a novel published in 1938, one of 32 whodunnits penned during her career.

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Good things come in cardboard boxes

As regular Bunker Notes readers will know, here at CAG we have some form when it comes to receivng mysterious parcels.

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A working holiday to Cass

Louise Henderson (1902-1994), whose birthday it is today, spent ten days at Cass with fellow artists Rita Angus and Julia Scarvell in May 1936.

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