Christchurch Art Gallery exhibition opens in Brisbane

Media release 11 December 2012

Christchurch Art Gallery exhibition opens in Brisbane

Brisbane audiences have the chance to experience the works of acclaimed New Zealand painter Shane Cotton at the Institute of Modern Art.

The exhibition The Hanging Sky, organised by Christchurch Art Gallery in association with the Institute of Modern Art and curated by the Gallery’s senior curator Justin Paton, opened on 8 December in time for the Queensland Art Gallery’s popular Asia-Pacific Triennial of Art. The event draws thousands of visitors from around the world. The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is one of Australia’s leading venues for the presentation of contemporary art.

The exhibition, featuring a series of ‘skyscapes’ – full of soaring birds, ragged skywriting and plunging cliffs – which Cotton has created during the past five years, was originally to open in Christchurch in 2011 before embarking on a tour of galleries in New Zealand and Australia. However, with the Gallery still closed after the 22 February earthquake, the decision was made to tour the exhibition in reverse.

Director Jenny Harper, who has just returned from the exhibition’s opening, says “Touring the exhibition in Brisbane is a tremendous opportunity to put a Christchurch Art Gallery exhibition in the path of visitors to the Triennial. It was pre-viewed by an important group of international art-curators and biennial organises who were in Brisbane for the APT and we received very positive feedback to the show. It’s inspiring to consider what our artists, gallery staff and others in the arts sector continue to achieve since the earthquakes in showing different types of art through opportunities such as these, as well as locally through our Outer Spaces programme.

“We anticipate that when The Hanging Sky returns to Christchurch, our audiences will embrace it. When Shane Cotton gave a public talk hosted by the Gallery in 2011 in the Geodome he drew an unprecedented crowd of 400 people, the largest audience ever drawn to one of our public programmes.

“Meanwhile our staff are fostering strong international connections and fulfilling an important role in the international arts community. These connections build on our excellent reputation as a gallery that tours exhibitions of an international standard and will again attract international exhibitions when we reopen.”

The exhibition includes a body of new work made especially for the exhibition, including one vast mural-scale painting, a spectacular suite of prints, and an array of richly-decorated baseball bats.

Justin Paton says that, ‘This is not a survey exhibition so much as a concentrated view of a career in motion and, with almost half the show consisting of brand-new work, it puts the emphasis firmly on the present tense. Above all it’s about an artist pushing his medium – paint and keeping himself and his audience energised and surprised.’

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication due for release in March with contributions by Justin Paton, New York poet Eliot Weinberger, IMA Director Robert Leonard, and Monash University Museum of Art curator Geraldine Barlow.

Shane Cotton trained at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts and is a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate. A key figure in New Zealand art for the last two decades, he also has a growing international exhibition history, including appearing in the 17th Biennale of Sydney in 2010 and holding solo shows at Rossi & Rossi Gallery in London and Anna Schwartz Gallery in Sydney.

The exhibition will show at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art from 8 December 2012 – 2 March 2013.

For more information visit www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz .

ENDS
Fact file:

• The Brisbane exhibition opens with a major work by Shane Cotton from the Christchurch Art Gallery permanent collection, 'Takarangi', from 2007.

• This is one of a number of Gallery collection works currently on display in exhibitions elsewhere, the most prominent being 'Angels and Aristocrats', organised by Auckland Art Gallery and including five of Christchurch Art Gallery's historical paintings.

• After its Brisbane showing, The Hanging Sky will travel to Campbelltown Arts Centre in Sydney, City Gallery in Wellington and Auckland Art Gallery, concluding its tour in Christchurch.

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