Public Programme February – March

Summer Programme
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

To kick off 2020 we make use of the long summer hours with Summer Sessions, a series of Thursday evening talks featuring speakers from a range of fields. Each of the talks expands key aspects of the suite of exhibitions that make up Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi at Twenty, which continue through 22 March.

 


Colin McCahon’s, Gate III, 1970, being installed in Ten Big Paintings, Auckland Art Gallery 1971

Thursday 13 February, 5.30pm
Hamish Keith in Conversation with Christina Barton
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

Art commentator Hamish Keith was Keeper at Auckland Art Gallery between 1961 and 1970. He has intimate knowledge of the genesis of the Ten Big Paintings exhibition (1971), for which Colin McCahon painted Gate III. He was also instrumental in securing a place for Christopher Perkins in the history of New Zealand painting by tracking him down and negotiating the return of several of his key New Zealand works. Don’t miss this special opportunity to hear Keith share these and other stories with Adam Art Gallery Director Christina Barton.

 


The Midhirst Dairy Factory, 1945, from: Midhirst Dairy Company Golden Jubilee, 1945

Thursday 20 February, 5.30pm
Robin Skinner on Perkins’ ‘Taranaki’
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

Join us as architecture historian, Associate Professor Robin Skinner discusses Christopher Perkins’ painting Taranaki (1931, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Collection). Skinner’s research covers a range of subjects, including post colonialism and architecture, nineteenth century discourse and the history of New Zealand architecture. In this talk he shares his detective work around the particular rural scene that Perkins depicts including a detailed account of the specific buildings pictured and Perkins’ possible motivations for including them. The painting is currently on show in the exhibition ‘Looking for a new country’ – Christopher Perkins in New Zealand.

 


Mata Aho Collective, Kiko Moana, 2017, polyethene tarpaulin and cotton thread, installation view in Oceania, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2018, collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Thursday 5 March, 5.30pm
‘Collecting the Collective’: Matariki Williams in conversation with Sophie Thorn
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

Join us as Curator Mātauranga Māori at Te Papa Tongarewa, Matariki Williams (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue) and Adam Art Gallery Collection Officer Sophie Thorn discuss some of the challenges posed by incorporating work by the Mata Aho Collective into a collection. Key questions about the nature of art and the purpose of collecting will be explored from the differing perspectives of the academy and the museum.

 


Operation Crossroads nuclear test by United States military, Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, 25 July 1946

Saturday 21 March, 2.00pm (this is updated from a previously advertised date)
Rebecca Priestley in conversation with Nina Dyer
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

For this talk, Rebecca Priestley, author of Mad on Radium (2012) and co-curator of A way through’: Colin McCahon’s Gate III, Nina Dyer dig deeper to unravel Colin McCahon’s nuclear concerns. Priestley’s 2012 book focuses in part on McCahon’s brother, physicist Jim McCahon. In the context of Colin McCahon’s mammoth painting Gate III, Priestley and Dyer will discuss the shared anti-nuclear positions of the painter and his nuclear physicist brother at a time when many New Zealanders feared nuclear war could reach our shores.