Thirty-two paintings from the Kelliher Art Trust Collection will be on display at the Ashburton Art Gallery from 08 August until 2 October 2022. The exhibition, curated by Kelliher Art Trust Curator Christopher Johnstone, will be coming to Ashburton as part of its South Island touring schedule for 2021-2023. It is comprised of Kelliher prize winners, subsequent purchases, and recently commissioned works by the Trust.

Visitors will encounter works by renowned New Zealand artists including Austen Deans, Colin Wheeler, Douglas Badcock, Dick Frizzell, and Michael Smither.

The Collection was started in 1956 by visionary businessman and philanthropist Sir Henry Kelliher. A longstanding patron of the arts, Sir Henry established the Kelliher Art Competition, “to capture the grandeur of the New Zealand scene in all its changes through the seasons”, as he described it. The objective of the competition was to encourage realistic portrayals of New Zealand’s landscapes and the ways of life of its people for the entire world to see.

Although the traditional style and subject matter challenged some artists and critics who were inclined towards modernist paintings, the Kelliher, as it soon was called, quickly became New Zealand’s premiere art event. The prize for the winning painting by a New Zealand artist was a sum not far off the country’s average annual wage at the time. The Kelliher Art Competition, later called the Kelliher Art Award, was held almost annually until 1977, by which time it had widened its scope to include portrait and genre painting. In recent years, the collection has been updated by occasional purchases of landscape paintings by more recent established artists. From 2015, the Trust has annually commissioned a painting by an emerging landscape painter as a way of honouring Sir Henry’s original objective to encourage the painting of New Zealand landscapes.

The South Island touring exhibition, Rare and Unrivalled Beauty – Landscape paintings from the Kelliher Art Trust Collection, includes about a third of the Trust’s collection. A free fully-illustrated exhibition catalogue is available to all visitors.

In conjunction with the exhibition, art historian and Curator Dr Mark Stocker will be giving a lecture at the Gallery: ‘The Kelliher Paintings: A New Zealand Phenomenon’, 31 August at 5.00pm.

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