06 Sep Opening Season: Nō Konei | From Here
NEWS RELEASE
6 SEPTEMBER 2024
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery
Opening Season: Nō Konei | From Here
Announced today, Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery’s opening season is named Nō Konei | From Here (9 November 2024 – 11 May 2025). This generous opening programme features over 200 artworks, spanning four centuries of European and New Zealand art history. Displayed across the breadth of the gallery’s newly expanded exhibition spaces, works will range from traditional gilt-framed paintings to contemporary practice in a variety of media.
Nō Konei | From Here includes pieces that reflect the breadth of the diverse and nationally significant Collection of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery, alongside newly commissioned works by artists with a strong connection to the region. 105 years since the gallery first opened and, after a ten year hiatus from operation at Pukenamu Queen’s Park.
Greg Donson, Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery Senior Curator and Programmes Manager, says the opening season represents the gallery’s unique story, “Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery’s curatorial team have chosen works that are imbued with the magic of the makers who walk among us – the artistic sightseers of our lives who traverse the terrain of the real and imagined, who show us and make us feel things we can’t quite put our finger on, our histories and memories.”
“Galleries and their collections are much like families; they have their own DNA, ghosts, mauri. They evolve organically and we can only wonder sometimes – how did this artwork arrive here in this place?” The curatorial team have created an exhibition which traverses the gallery’s spaces and collection, aiming to create conversations that span across time and media.
Many of the contemporary pieces in Nō Konei | From Here, are works created by artists who are alumni of the gallery’s Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence programme, established in 1986. These works were made in response to Whanganui, and will be shown with newly commissioned works by over twenty current practitioners. The artists chosen for this exhibition represent diverse points of view and voices, the commonality being their link to here and what the kaupapa ‘nō konei’ evokes for them.
Also featured are solo artist projects by Matthew McIntyre-Wilson (Taranaki, Ngā Māhanga and Titahi), Tia Ranginui (Ngāti Hine Oneone) and Alexis Neal (Ngāti Awa & Te Ātiawa). The origin of each of these individual projects is deeply embedded in Whanganui, and each of these new bodies of work have been years in the making, contributing to a thoughtful and connected opening season.
A major new survey of celebrated Whanganui painter Edith Collier (1885-1964) will also be on show (9 November 2024 – 16 February 2025). Curated by Jill Trevelyan, this exhibition and its accompanying book, published 9 September 2024, places Collier as one of the leading lights of early Modernist painting in New Zealand.
“This opening programme celebrates the gallery’s rich history and bright future. Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery is back, strengthened, optimistic; reflecting on our past and looking to our future.” says Andrew Clifford, Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery Director. “It marks an important moment in our story and highlights the significance of our region to the wider creative sector in Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad.”
Nō Konei | From Here
Opening Saturday 9 November 2024
Free Entry
ENDS
For press information contact:
Gabby Brunton, Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery
gabby.brunton@sarjeant.org.nz / 022 090 7377
Notes to Editors
The Collection of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery contains more than 9000 items, made up of approximately 8000 artworks and many archival materials, including long term loans such as the Edith Collier Trust Collection of 545 artworks.
Spanning 400 years of international and New Zealand art history, the collection includes works in a broad range of media from photography, paintings, and works on paper to sculpture, ceramics, glass works and video art, as well as supporting archives.
The collection includes paintings by contemporary New Zealand and Māori artists and old masters, including Edith Collier, Colin McCahon, Cliff Whiting, Robyn Kahukiwa, Gretchen Albrecht and Charles Frederick Goldie.
The new $70 million gallery now spans more than 4,500 sqm and is part of an incredible renewal of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery at Pukenamu Queen’s Park in the centre of Whanganui. One of New Zealand’s oldest purpose-built galleries, it first opened in 1919 and houses a nationally significant collection.
The Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery Redevelopment Project is a partnership between Whanganui District Council, Whanganui Iwi, Central Government, and supporters and benefactors, including large and small private donors and trusts, with support from the Sarjeant Gallery Trust.
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery now comprises the 105-year-old heritage-listed Sarjeant Gallery, with its distinctive 13-metre-high dome and Oamaru stone exterior, which has been earthquake-strengthened and meticulously restored, and the new state-of-the-art Te Pātaka o Tā Te Atawhai Archie John Taiaroa. The gallery’s expansion includes a west-facing atrium, serving as a new entrance, and a carved totara waka walk bridge, which links the original heritage gallery to the new wing.
Design has been led by Warren and Mahoney, while the new Te Pātaka o Tā Te Atawhai Archie John Taiaroa incorporates visual narratives chosen through a co-design process with Te Kāhui Toi o Tūpoho.
A unique element of the co-design is the overarching concept of kānapanapa, the phenomenon of light from the river environment, embodied in the new architecture. The etched black granite cladding and metal tioata inserts, which glint in the light, along with the carved totara waka bridge, seamlessly connect the heritage building to the modern extension.
The gallery now features ten exhibition spaces, a family room, a reading room and library, a classroom, retail space, a café, and publicly accessible event and meeting rooms. Additionally, the facility also includes a temperature and humidity-controlled storage area for its nationally significant permanent collection of works, a photographic studio and workshops.
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery is a cultural facility of Whanganui District Council.