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2/6/2011

Behind Closed Doors / in camera

Adam Art Gallery, Wellington

Behind Closed Doors
New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington

From June to December the Adam Art Gallery presents, Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington, a major exhibition that sets out to canvass selective ‘moments’ in a history of New Zealand art from 1946 to the present, drawn exclusively from private collections in Wellington.

This revealing exhibition provides a rare opportunity to see works that complement and extend the holdings of New Zealand’s public and corporate collections. The paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are simultaneously significant works by major figures and tributes to the often close relationships that accrue between artists and their patrons.

Many of the selected works are physically and psychologically ambitious, supporting the claim that it is possible to stage a ‘museum-quality’ show drawn exclusively from private sources. There are also works that are modest and delicate, testament to the intimate and personal relationships developed by living with art.

The exhibition includes paintings by renowned artists Toss Wollaston and Colin McCahon, seldom-seen works by Michael Smither and Rita Angus, along with provocative multimedia art works by Peter Robinson and Ronnie van Hout.

Behind Closed Doors has also become a portrait of Wellington city. Working like a sleuth, curator of the exhibition and Gallery Director, Christina Barton has uncovered a surprising number of committed art lovers in the city, whose collecting endeavours discreetly nourish Wellington’s cultural life.

The exhibition will be complemented by a book documenting a selection of the works as they appear at home, with photographs by leading New Zealand photographer Neil Pardington and texts by writer Lara Strongman. This is designed to offer an intimate alternative to the ‘institutional’ framing of works at the Adam Art Gallery. This publication will be launched in August.

Alongside Behind Closed Doors the Adam Art Gallery is staging a changing programme of projects titled: in camera: a project series around and about collecting. Located in one room of the Adam Art Gallery, the Kirk Gallery, this series illuminates other personal acts of collecting.

The project series will be launched with g. bridle’s The Inimical: A Selection from the Retreat which is an iteration of an ongoing process of collection and presentation undertaken by a mysterious individual whose status as artist, curator or collector is open to conjecture.

A public programme of floor talks, panel discussions and film screenings has been designed to provide a platform for critical discussion on the issues raised by these exhibitions.

in camera: a project series around and about collecting:
In the Kirk Gallery of the Adam Art Gallery

16 July - 21 August
Richard Frater, Chris Prosser, Anna Sanderson
(A Film Called) Ellipsis

In Continuous Project Altered Daily (October Books, 1993) American artist Robert Morris proposes how sculpture can accommodate time and the environment. Inspired by this collection of writing, three different practitioners will take up residence in the gallery to produce an accumulative environment—akin to a film in the making—to reflect on the act of collecting as a process in time. Musician and composer Chris Prosser will sample material from his personal archive of musical scores; artist Richard Frater will present a compilation of New Zealand moving image on the natural environment; and writer Anna Sanderson will respond to the ceramic collections held at Victoria University of Wellington.
Curated by Laura Preston.

27 August - 2 October
Leonid Tishkov
Private MoonUtilising humour, satire and poetic tenderness, Moscow-based artist Leonid Tishkov provides poignant insights into the human condition, particularly the relationship between personal will and state control as experienced in Soviet Russia. This exhibition presents his most recent series of large-scale colour photographs. Each depicts an intimate and evolving relationship between a man and his Private Moon.
Exhibition organised by Marcus Williams, Unitec, Auckland.

8 October - 13 November
The Victorian Album, the Feminine and the PersonalDuring the Victorian era, photography became remarkably popular and accessible, stimulated in part by the technological innovation of the carte-devisite process. This exhibition will examine the way in which New Zealand women utilised this new medium, presenting work that has rarely—and in many cases never—been displayed or reproduced, to provide a fascinating window into Pakeha and Maori women’s experience of modernity and the complex cultural interweavings of late colonial society.
Curated by Dr Sandy Callister, Resident Scholar, Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington.

19 November - 18 December
Shadowgraphs: Photographic Portraits by Len LyeDrawn primarily from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery collection, this exhibition will present almost all the photogram portraits made by Len Lye in 1947, a body of work that until recently was neither well known nor fully understood. Here Lye’s works will be contextualised in relation to the tradition of the silhouette portrait and the camera-less photograph. This is the Adam Art Gallery’s biennial student-led project which enables students to research, write about and present an exhibition on a unique body of work.
Curated by Professor Geoffrey Batchen and his Art History Honours students.

Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington is supported by Creative New Zealand.

Press contact
Laura Preston +64 4 463 5229 laura.preston@vuw.ac.nz

Opening and Artist talk:
Marcus Moore on g. bridle
The Inimical: A Selection from the Retreat
Friday 3 June 2011, 6pm All welcome

Adam Art Gallery - Victoria University of Wellington
Gate 3, Kelburn Parade PO Box 600, Wellington 6140 New Zealand
Tuesday to Sunday 11am-5pm
free entry

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