In Conversation with the Past

In Conversation with the Past

History will gain a modern twist for the last exhibition of the year at the Adam Art Gallery.

Source Material-- Five Conversations with the Past is a suite of five discrete projects, each with their own approach to the re-visioning of historical material.

“Source Material is a wonderful gathering of different threads that connect past and present, combining important new bodies of work by leading New Zealand artists with insightful new scholarship about our western cultural inheritance,” says Adam Art Gallery Director Christina Barton.

Upstairs The Labours of Herakles, the touring exhibition of lithographs and etchings by Marian Maguire, casts the archetypal Greek hero as New Zealand colonist. This exhibition of prints will be accompanied by the presentation of seven precious Attic vases, illustrating scenes from the life of Herakles and selected from various collections by Victoria University’s Senior Lecturer in Classics, Judy Deuling.

Downstairs an exhibition curated jointly by David Maskill, Senior Lecturer in Art History at Victoria University, and his honours-year postgraduate students looks closely at the artist prints published in the 19th-century French journal Gazette des Beaux-Arts from 1859 to 1933, held in the university’s library. This curatorial project is the first to address the journal’s key role in the survival, revival and dissemination of European printmaking.

The fourth exhibition presents Bible Studies (New Testament) a major new body of work by leading New Zealand artist Gavin Hipkins that brings literary and religious sources into play to produce a rich commentary on the lasting power of iconography as its shapes us personally and collectively.

Finally the Adam Art Gallery pays tribute to New Zealand artist Julian Dashper by presenting two recent acquisitions to the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection which also recall the past in unexpected ways.

The Adam Art Gallery is publishing two catalogues to accompany the exhibitions. One has been prepared by David Maskill and his students to accompany their selection of prints from the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. The other documents Gavin Hipkins’ Bible Studies (New Testament) and features a new essay by leading Australian art historian Rex Butler and an interview with the artist conducted by contemporary art writer Allan Smith.

In realising these projects the Adam Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, Photography by Woolf, Victoria University’s School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Exhibition Services, and Coopers Creek.

Source Material will be accompanied by an informative public programme including exhibition talks, a film programme focused on Herakles, and a forum on the legacy of narrative within visual culture, all of which will extend the Adam Art Gallery’s conversation with the past.

The exhibition's official launch, to be opened by Vice-Chancellor Professor Pat Walsh, will be held on Friday 16 October at 6pm.

The winner of the Chartwell Trust Student Art Writing Prize will also be announced.
 

Adam Art Gallery

Victoria University of Wellington

Gate 3, Kelburn Parade

PO Box 600, Wellington 6140
New Zealand

Tuesday – Sunday, 11am - 5pm

FREE ENTRY
ends
 

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