Parihaka exhibition tops 53,000 visitors

3 February - 31 March 2001 Admission free

City Gallery Wellington will be filled with artworks from one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in Australasia, from this weekend. Colin McCahon, Bill Hammond, and Rosalie Gascoigne feature alongside leading Maori and Aboriginal artists in home and away - Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Art from the Chartwell Collection.

The exhibition has been drawn from the Chartwell Collection, started in the 1970s by Hamilton businessman R B K Gardiner as a way of bringing contemporary art to Hamilton at a time when the city was without an art gallery. Now numbering around 600 works, the Collection is widely recognised as one of the most significant of its type in the region.

There will be a special lecture by Doug Hall, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, on Saturday 3 February at 2pm to mark the opening. A floortalk by exhibition curator William McAloon will take place on Sunday 11 February at 2pm.

City Gallery Wellington has created a special exhibition to run alongside home and away, highlighting recent acquisitions from the Chartwell Collection. Artists include Fiona Pardington, Michael Parekowhai, Peter Peryer and Wellingtonian Simon Morris.

home and away features mainly works of the past 15 years, with the theme of trans-Tasman similarities and differences. Emerging artists from both countries are represented, alongside indigenous artists (Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, from Australia), and Maori artists Peter Robinson and Jacqueline Fraser (recently chosen as New Zealand's first representatives in this year's Venice Biennale international art exhibition). Doug Hall's visit has been made possible by the Chartwell Trust. home and away is supported by the Chartwell Trust, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Creative New Zealand.

ends

© Scoop Media