Lots and lots of new art
Three exhibitions open at City Gallery from February 24. Bitch in Slippers brings the human side of Antarctica’s icy landscape to the Hirschfeld Gallery. The project, which re-imagines the white continent through image and text, was conceived by photographer Anne Noble, writer Lloyd Jones and graphic designer Sarah Maxey. Named after a crane Noble photographed while in Antarctica, the exhibition is “about our ongoing human relationship to this place and offers something far warmer than the typically empty frozen plateau,” says curator Lily Hacking.
The Obstinate Object spills out of City Gallery into its surrounds, where the line blurs between sculpture, installation and performance. The exhibition brings together work by 32 New Zealand artists including a rare public outing from Don Driver.
Inventive photography, portraiture and sculpture will be on display in Te āhua nei: form and content, showing the works of Gina Matchitt and Susana Lei’ataua. Both women divide their time between New Zealand and the United States, and the exhibition shows their attempts to “reconcile a global identity with ideas of tūrangawaewae, home and belonging,” says curator Reuben Friend.
New Zealand’s leading portrait showcase will take place at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery from February 23. The 2012 Adam Portrait Award will be judged by Louise Doyle, the director of Canberra’s Australian Portrait Gallery. The winner receives $15,000, while a People’s Prize of $2000 will be awarded to the artist whose work receives the most public votes.
Comic meets cosmic in The Amazing BraPants! and Tutti Time, both opening at Toi Poneke Gallery on February 24. In The Amazing BraPants! Pam Brabants gives life’s awkward moments a new spin through obsessively rendered drawings and needlework, while ordinary objects become ‘symbols of human thought, communities and cosmic truths’ in Douglas Crane’s Tutti Time. This vast exhibition comprises more than 100 everyday items seen in a new light.
The Dowse presents So it Vanishes from February 25, where pleasure turns to horror when visitors to a room filled with ethereal bubbles realise that they hold an essence of water from a city morgue. Mexican artist Teresa Margolles often comments on the anonymity of victims of violent death in her country, exploring the tension between horror and beauty.
The Dowse also sees the opening of Shapeshifter, an exhibition of New Zealand contemporary sculpture featuring surprises in colour, shape and material and set amongst the flowers at Lower Hutt’s Civic Gardens.
Te Papa is re-opening Collecting Contemporary, showcasing a selection of works acquired between 2006 and 2011. The newly acquired works, including painting, furniture design and ceramics, will replace some of the works previously on display.
Black is Wellington’s uniform and a symbol of national identity, themes explored in Black in Fashion: Wearing the colour black in New Zealand, opening at the Museum of Wellington City and Sea on February 24. The exhibition explains why black has become an inherent part of New Zealand culture.










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