Group show
The More You Know: The Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection in Context
02 February – 12 April 2015
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi launched its 2015 programme with a suite of three exhibitions that brought together seldom-seen gems, new acquisitions, and works borrowed for the occasion, to offer fresh insights into and deepen knowledge of the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection.
Then and Now, Here and Nowhere: Gavin Hipkins, Peter Trevelyan, Shaun Waugh, Kate Woods, and Brent Wong
Brent Wong’s surreal late 1960s paintings of empty New Zealand landscapes, in which strange geometrical forms impossibly appear, are paired with a new generation of artists, who also explore spatial juxtaposition and abstract modeling to uncanny or critical ends. This exhibition was an opportunity to celebrate the long-standing generosity of the artist, who lent two paintings to Victoria University and Wellington College of Education (now Victoria’s Faculty of Education) after their exhibition at the University Library in 1975. It was also an occasion to reassess the ongoing potency of their imagery, through the lens of contemporary art that seems to echo Wong’s aesthetic.
The Private World of Gordon H. Brown: Art Historian, Artist, Collector
Gordon H. Brown is perhaps best known as Colin McCahon’s biographer and for his co-authorship with Hamish Keith of the landmark Introduction to New Zealand Painting (1969), the first book to set out a history of painting that famously argued for the primacy of landscape and hard-edged depiction as the subject and representational mode most truthful to the nature of this place. This exhibition presented another side to the art historian, bringing together his own drawings and paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, with works from his personal collection, which he gifted to Victoria University in 2010. These provide a rare opportunity to explore another side to Brown as a creative consumer of art and literature, whose personal taste bears little resemblance to the aesthetic standpoint with which he is normally associated.
With thanks to Tivoli Art/Books/Film, Waiheke Island and Mahara Gallery, Waikanae.
Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand
The Feilding Panel was gifted to the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection in 2013. A precious legacy of a defining time in the careers of several artists and in the development of biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, it was carved by students (including then-emerging Māori artists Cliff Whiting and Paratene Matchitt, amongst others) of Gordon Tovey (1901–1974), the inspiring supervisor of arts and crafts in the Department of Education. It demonstrates the practical steps Tovey took to train arts advisors and teachers to embrace Māori and European arts and crafts so they could integrate these into their teaching and develop their own creative practices. This not only ensured that New Zealand children were exposed to indigenous art from an early age and enabled to explore their creative potential as an integral dimension of the curriculum, but it also encouraged new generations of artists to work at the interstices of the two cultures that make up New Zealand society. This exhibition considered the legacy of such an approach by bringing together a range of works by Māori, Pākehā, and Pasifika artists from the VUW Art Collection whose practices explore the rich cultural traditions and complex cross-cultural histories that have shaped Aotearoa New Zealand.
Installation view, Then and Now, Here and Nowhere: Gavin Hipkins, Peter Trevelyan, Shaun Waugh, Kate Woods, and Brent Wong in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Brent Wong, Misconception, 1969, acrylic on board, on loan to Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection from the Artist
Installation view, Then and Now, Here and Nowhere: Gavin Hipkins, Peter Trevelyan, Shaun Waugh, Kate Woods, and Brent Wong in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Gavin Hipkins, The Model (Action) , 1999, 92 individually framed colour photographs, Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, commissioned for the opening of the Adam Art Gallery. Installation view, Then and Now, Here and Nowhere: Gavin Hipkins, Peter Trevelyan, Shaun Waugh, Kate Woods, and Brent Wong in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, Then and Now, Here and Nowhere: Gavin Hipkins, Peter Trevelyan, Shaun Waugh, Kate Woods, and Brent Wong in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, The Private World of Gordon H. Brown: Art Historian, Artist, Collector in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015 Photo: Shaun Waugh
Jeffrey Harris, Furniture for the imagination, 1971, graphite on paper, Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, gifted 2010. Installation view, The Private World of Gordon H. Brown: Art Historian, Artist, Collector in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015 Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, The Private World of Gordon H. Brown: Art Historian, Artist, Collector in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015 Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Installation view, Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Students of Gordon Tovey including Cliff Whiting, Paratene Matchitt, David Aitken, Murray Gilbert, Roland Decke, Roger Hardie, Kerk Taylor, Lawson Fraser, Feilding Panel, 1964, Totara, Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, gifted 2013. Installation view, Give and Take/Hoki Whakamuri, Haere Whakamua: Dynamic Cultural Forms in Aotearoa New Zealand in The More You Know: The Victoria University Art Collection in Context, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh