Dale Frank

27 Nov 2019 - 8 Feb 2020 The paintings of celebrated contemporary Australian artist Dale Frank have long mesmerised viewers, their characteristically colourful surfaces at once seductive and sublime. Over a successful international career spanning four decades, Frank has continuously experimented with the conceptual and formal properties of paint, asking first: how does paint move? And then: how does painting move us? Mounted across both gallery spaces, Gow Langsford Gallery presents a new body of work painted on mirrored Perspex, emphasising the physical experience of his paintings. Read more

Many Worlds

Max Gimblett 30 Oct - 23 Nov 2019 When one considers contemporary abstraction in New Zealand, Max Gimblett is an artist who has been at the forefront of this movement for decades. Having lived in New York since 1972, New Zealand born Gimblett uses his dual citizenship to his advantage with regular visits back to his home country that he greatly adores. The results are works that are filled with the vibrancy and immediacy that comes with living in New York, and an innate ease from his Kiwi roots. Max’s Zen Buddhism philosophies impact greatly on his practice, represented not only physically through gesture and movement whilst creating the works, but also on a deeper spiritual level. Read more

Athenree

Karl Maughan 30 Oct - 23 Nov 2019 Karl Maughan has dedicated his career to creating his characteristic horticultural paintings. Over an extraordinary career spanning more than 30 years, Maughan has found endless inspiration in gardens, which for him bridge dreams and nature. Gow Langsford Gallery presents a new exhibition by the widely recognised and highly sought after artist, entitled Athenree, a body of work which celebrates the Spring landscape in all its floral glory. Read more

of common walls

Hugo Koha Lindsay 2 - 24 Oct 2019 A two-fold question frames Hugo Koha Lindsay’s most recent body of work: what is a landscape? And what can it be within the language of abstraction? Lindsay poses this question in the context of the environment of late capitalism; a landscape of sorts that is both the physical land and buildings, and the socio-economic atmosphere. He submits his paintings as “alternative cartographies”, maps that don’t simply describe geographical landmass, but which ask: what is the physical and psychological experience of being in this space? Lindsay’s paintings featured in of common walls are the direct residue of such musings. Read more

Everywhere in the World

John Pule 4 - 28 Sep 2019 Everywhere in the World provides an intimate viewing into John Pule’s life and the influence that the Pacific, particularly his birthplace of Niue, has had on his practice. These new works evoke a sense of place, memories of a time gone by and a different pace of life than what most of us are accustomed to. In his artist statement, Pule’s poetic narrative helps to navigate us, the viewer, to this other land surrounded by the ocean and lush greenery of the forest that envelopes those who inhabit it. Read more

The Intimates

Reuben Paterson 4 - 28 Sep 2019 E whiti e te ra, e Maene ki te Kiri - the title of a painting of clouds by celebrated artist Reuben Paterson takes its title from the first two lines of a Maori waiata or folk song meaning: "Shine, the sun soft on skin." It is this same lyrical warmth we can expect from the artist's most recent body of work. The Intimateswill feature three sculptures which act as overgrown mobiles to mesmerise and delight the inner child. These will stand alongside intricately glittered botanical and cloudscape paintings which are imbued with intimacy, celebrating love, loss, and personal growth. Paterson, taking inspiration from the Canadian poet Anne Michaels, has commissioned a piece of writing from friend and art essayist Dina Jezdic to accompany the exhibition. Read more

Spring Catalogue 2019

Group Exhibition 7 - 31 Aug 2019 Auckland City, Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] The Spring Catalogue exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery has been a tradition for over 25 years, showcasing significant works of art by established New Zealand and international artists. This year, the exhibition will run across both the Lorne Street and newly renovated Kitchener Street Gallery spaces, and will include work by artists Gordon Walters, Lois White, Colin McCahon, Patrick Hanly, Karl Maughan and others. Read more

Pleiades: Seven Sisters of New Zealand Painting

Group Exhibition 17 Jul - 3 Aug 2019 Auckland City Pleiades: Seven Sisters of New Zealand Painting charts female painters through 100 years of painting in Aotearoa. Featuring a selection of works from canonical artists Frances Hodgkins, Rita Angus, Louise Henderson, and Doris Lusk alongside contemporary artist Sara Hughes and emerging painters Ruth Ige and Vivienne Worn, Pleiades considers the communicative qualities of painting, and celebrates a constellation of artists whose practices embrace and evolve the complexities of the medium. Read more

Across the Earth: 100 Years of Colin McCahon

10 Jul - 3 Aug 2019 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] To mark the centenary of Colin McCahon’s birth, Gow Langsford Gallery celebrates the preeminent New Zealand modernist with an exhibition of his paintings on loose canvas. Across the Earth: 100 years of Colin McCahon unites a collection of significant paintings that exemplify the artist’s distinctive treatment of the New Zealand landscape, and demonstrates the austere spiritualism endemic to his practice. Focussing on loose canvases of McCahon’s Muriwai period, the exhibition explores the immediacy of raw materials in the works of the giant of New Zealand painting. Read more

Enveloping Scales

Group Exhibition 12 Jun - 6 Jul 2019 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] An oversized painting will frequently dominate the room in which it hangs, engulfing the viewer physically and, often, emotionally. Gow Langsford Gallery presents Enveloping Scales, an exhibition of five paintings that consider the act of looking when viewing large format works. Each work typical of their maker’s practice, Reuben Paterson’s Whakapapa Get Down on Your Knees, John Pule’s Not of this Time (Dreamland), John Reynold’s Liberty During Construction, Judy Millar’s Ring in the View and Jeffrey Harris’ Of Time and Ambience all evince the affective qualities afforded by large scale painting. Read more

Large Format

Laurence Aberhart 15 May - 8 Jun 2019 Laurence Aberhart works are understated yet powerful, captured using a 100-year-old Korona View Camera; the sort that pioneers used in the nineteenth century to bring home records of what the world looked like. Aberhart develops each image using an entirely analog process where each is developed by hand, usually keeping to the same scale as the camera's negative allows. For the first time, this new body of photographs are all printed at a larger scale and have been specially printed in Belgium to maintain the intensity of detail and atmosphere that he captures in each image. Read more

8 Minutes and 17 Seconds

Sara Hughes 15 May - 8 Jun 2019 These new paintings have developed out of an intense three year period working on my largest public art project to date for the New Zealand International Convention Centre. A work on 550 glass panels that covers 2400 sq m. Thinking of what it means to be from this land and of this place challenged my thinking and pushed me into new territory. It made me delve back into my past, to remember my childhood growing up in the far north of New Zealand. It was the overwhelming sense of light and colour that was imprinted on my memory. I have clear recollections of the enormity of the bush when I was young and collecting as many types of green leaves and foliage as I could. I would try to catalogue them but when I came back the next day they had faded and changed so I would start again. - Sara Hughes Read more

New Works

Group Exhibition 17 Apr - 11 May 2019 Auckland City Our latest group exhibition will feature new works fresh from our artists' studios, including works by Max Gimblett, Toby Raine, Judy Millar, James Cousins, Reuben Paterson, Michael Hight, Sara Hughes, Hugo Koha Lindsay, Graham Fletcher, Martin Ball, Gregor Kregar, Lisa Roet and David McCracken. The exhibition will also coincide with the Auckland Art Fair (1 - 5 May 2019) where we will be exhibiting new works by Karl Maughan, Paul Dibble and Max Gimblett. Read more

A World Not of Things

Judy Millar 17 Apr - 11 May 2019 Gow Langsford Gallery presents A World Not Of Things, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Judy Millar. Read more

Mercurial

John Walsh 20 Mar - 13 Apr 2019 Mercurial, the title of John Walsh’s new exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery, is to be in a continuous state of change and evolution. Deriving from the Latin mercuriālis, it is also associated with the Roman God Mercury, the messenger, who serves as the guide to the underworld and is, perhaps, related to Manaia and Marakihau the messengers of our Ao Maori (Maori world view). The ethereal ecosystems of Walsh’s paintings might also be mercurial in nature, traversing a fluid truth between myth and reality where figures emerge from familiar yet uncertain landscapes with beings and creatures constantly morphing. Walsh’s mixed Aitanga-a-Hauiti and New Zealand Irish ancestry has long informed his practice, frequently combining Maori oral histories and cosmology with their European counterparts to express the constant negotiation between cultures and their environment. Read more

Arcs and Angles

Bernar Venet 20 Mar - 13 Apr 2019 Widely regarded as one of France's greatest living artists, Bernar Venet has a resume that spans more than decades and includes exhibitions and accolades from all around the world. Highlights include solo exhibitions at prestigious French locations such as the Palace of Versailles, and the Arc de Triomphe. Locally, one of his tallest sculptures soars to almost 27 metres at Gibbs Farm, just north of Auckland. Gow Langsford Gallery is proud to present Arcs and Angles, a solo exhibition of works from two formative series, marking his first solo exhibition with Gow Langsford since 2012. Read more

Almost Blue

Group Exhibition 20 Feb - 16 Mar 2019 Auckland City Associated with the sea and sky that surround us, the colour blue has seduced artists and their audiences for millennia. Unlike red or yellow ochre, the blue we see day to day cannot be turned into a pigment - instead artists have turned to rare and precious sources to create the colour. The captivating colour has seen artists from Raphael to Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky to Yves Klein dedicate periods of their practices to studies in blue. This summer, Gow Langsford Gallery applies a blue filter to present Almost Blue, an exhibition which brings together works by international heavy hitter Anish Kapoor alongside prominent Australasian artists including Dale Frank and Max Gimblett. Read more

Bloom

Chris Heaphy 20 Feb - 16 Mar 2019 Chris Heaphy’s new exhibition Bloom explores the relationship between painting and the natural world. Images appear familiar, yet somehow unfamiliar in their relationship to us the viewer and to one another. Plants or trees are placed in vases or appear to grow from silhouettes of Maori portraits or heads, images which themselves are derived from historical portraits; mostly painted by European artists depicting Maori in a contrived style to suit an audience far from New Zealand. Perhaps it is Heaphy’s intent to claim them back and reinstate them into a cultural context from which they were taken. Read more

Lolly Scramble

Group Exhibition 14 Jan - 16 Feb 2019 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Lolly Scramble is an eclectic mix of recent works by Australasian Gallery artists. The brightly coloured mix takes its title from the children’s party game and Dick Frizzell’s 2018 painting Lots of Lollies. Read more