Annual Catalogue 2021-22

Group Exhibition 6 Dec 2021 - 26 Jan 2022 Auckland City Our Annual Catalogue exhibition will run until the end of January 2022 and features works from Jude Rae, Richard Killeen, Pablo Picasso, Pat Hanly, Jacqueline Fahey, Bill Hammond, Tony Cragg, Katharina Grosse, Ralph Hotere, Bernar Venet, John Pule, Judy Millar, Anish Kapoor, Colin McCahon, Frances Hodgkins, Tony Fomison, Barry Flanagan, Allen Maddox, Max Gimblett, Paul Dibble, Dick Frizzell and Michael Smither. Read more

Timestamp

Sara Hughes 15 Nov - 4 Dec 2021 I am fascinated by the measuring of time and light, the way our day is structured by the sun and our orbit, how light changes during this rotation from day to night and all the variants in between. With periods of lockdowns and restrictions over the past 18 months I... Read more

Large Works 2021

Laurence Aberhart 15 Nov - 1 Dec 2021 One of New Zealand’s seminal photographers, Laurence Aberhart, is a self-taught photographer with a notable style; his work seemingly transcends time. Now in his seventies Aberhart continues to resist the digital age and produces contemporary photographs captured through an analogue historical lens, skillfully utilising an antique Korona View Camera. The results are black and white photographs that balance compositional precision with intense atmosphere. Read more

Gone But Not Forgotten

Paul Dibble 12 Nov - 1 Dec 2021 In these times, which are like no other, Paul Dibble in his Palmerston North studio has continued his artistic practice, focusing inwards to develop works themed on the beloved lost Huia, a subject that has occupied him for nearly a decade. Read more

Amen Break

Reuben Paterson 20 Oct - 13 Nov 2021 Reuben Paterson’s largest work to date Guide Kaiārahi was installed on the forecourt of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in July 2021. The 10-metre tall waka pītau carved in bright clear Perspex, fitted with nearly 600 crystals, comes to life at night when it refracts light and casts an... Read more

Clouds and Fire and Water and Air

Judy Millar 4 - 28 Aug 2021 “The works for this exhibition were, for the most part, painted during the year 2020. A period that will be forever bracketed in our hearts and minds as the year of the pandemic. A time when the world went eerily quiet. A time when we were forced to find new relationships with our immediate surroundings.

I spent the year in my isolated home and studio on Auckland’s West Coast. Time slowed. My own focus was on the simplest of things. The movement of clouds. Making fire to stay warm. The light on the water outside my window. Wind and air.

Painting for me is always an attempt to grasp hold of something. As I took the colours of fire, mixed paint to the fluidity of water, produced clouds of coloured spray and attempted to aerate the surface of the canvas into an open space; the solidity of things moved in and out of focus. Forms emerged on the canvas but had a fleeting feeling, as if they were about to dissipate or perhaps hadn’t yet fully formed. Red moved to pink and then back to red. Everything seemed to be in motion. The resulting paintings together form a group where movements continue from one to another, read in this way they become a form of moving landscape. Individually they are snapshots of a particular time and place.”

- Artist Statement, Judy Millar, 2021 Read more

The Dark and The Light

John Walsh 14 - 31 Jul 2021 Gow Langsford Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Wellington based painter John Walsh. Read more

Ralph Hotere

14 - 31 Jul 2021 Read more

Fire in Light

Pat Hanly 16 Jun - 10 Jul 2021 Auckland City 1960 was a pivotal year for Pat Hanly (1932 - 2004), with the emigre artist producing what would be his first cohesive series, Fire on Earth. Painted in London, three from the series were featured in a group exhibition at the pioneering Gallery One in London's Soho, a new exhibition... Read more

Sam Harrison

16 Jun - 10 Jul 2021 Auckland City The practice of Christchurch-based artist Sam Harrison explores the universal via the human figure across a range of media - sculpture, woodblock printing, and watercolour. While each material process provides a different insight into the tradition of nude representation, each also feeds into the same conversation: after millennia of depicting the same subject, what does the nude mean for art and the human experience now? Read more

Still not close enough

John Pule 19 May - 12 Jun 2021 For over thirty years, John Pule's painting has returned, time and again, to Niue, and especially to Liku on the island's east coast, the place of his birth and his family's ancestral lands. His paintings have not offered literal depictions. In earlier works, localities were mapped through a visual idiom... Read more

Defences Against The Void

Jacqueline Fahey 21 Apr - 15 May 2021 Gow Langsford Gallery is delighted to present the gallery’s first exhibition with Art Foundation Icon Jacqueline Fahey ONZM. Fahey’s paintings collide portraiture with urban and suburban landscapes to create riotously colourful compositions which revel in the chaos of the everyday. Defences Against the Void demonstrates that throughout her lengthy career, Fahey’s subject matter has varied considerably, but her pugnacious approach has not. They are intimate observations of social practices, constructs, and politics, grounded in close consideration of how these issues affect the daily lives of those around her. Read more

Leda

Antonio Murado 21 Apr - 15 May 2021 We are pleased to exhibit a new body of works by Spanish born, New York based artist Antonio Murado. In Leda, Murado continues to explore ideas from previous works; alternating between both abstract and landscape painting.

In recent years the artist has produced large expansive canvases that are heavily monochromatic in tone. The emphasis is on the medium itself and explores the alchemy of paint and varnish and the effect these have layered upon one another. In this new series, Murado continues this investigation with fields of abstract gestures in soft muted tones, and returns to his more iconic layering of delicate blooms and petals. These flowers are formed not with a brush but by blowing and scraping the oil paint onto the surface. The resulting works have a simplistic and elegant ease with the surface creating unique textures and depth within the varying layers. Read more

Frieze

Group Exhibition 17 Mar - 17 Apr 2021 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] The exhibition, titled Frieze, is the third iteration of a show that takes inspiration from the classical frieze tradition where a long stretch of painting, sculpture or calligraphy wraps a wall or architrave. Previous iterations spanned the interior of the Kitchener Street Gallery with paintings in 2005, and Lorne Street in 2011. Here in its third iteration, with works made specifically for the space, the exhibition celebrates this moment in time in contemporary art and pays homage to the site that has hosted numerous artists' projects in the past. Read more

Three Sculptures

Tony Cragg 17 Mar - 16 Apr 2021 This is Tony Cragg's axiom, and the driving force behind the acclaimed British sculptor's practice. His biomorphic sculptures made from glass, steel, bronze, iron and wood blend the organic world around us with the industrial to create new forms of immense and at times alien beauty. In a time when... Read more

This is Life on Earth

Chris Heaphy 17 Mar - 17 Apr 2021 This is Life on Earth is a suite of paintings by artist Chris Heaphy. They construct poignant worlds of familiar and unfamiliar cultural icons and symbols of New Zealand. From his perspective as an artist of Māori descent, Heaphy’s use of iconography unveils the often-unseen dynamics of cultural exchange between Māori and Pākehā upon his canvases. As in previous iterations of Heaphy’s practice, we may instantly recognise the surface meaning of these symbols; however, it is the quiet associations Heaphy makes through paint and the proximity of one symbol to another that as a whole reveals a deeper, more nuanced outcome. Read more

The Path of Light

Max Gimblett 17 Feb - 13 Mar 2021 In The Path of Light, esteemed contemporary painter and calligrapher Max Gimblett’s vibrant energy plays out across the surface of his canvases. Punctuations of gilding in precious metals, for which the artist is well-known, are suggestive of alchemy and both western and non-western religious beliefs. The use of gold, in particular, has a long history which dates back to Egyptian tomb reliefs and paintings. More recently, it has associations with honour, consciousness and enlightenment, which Gimblett draws upon, embracing its significance across cultures. Read more

Threshold

Group Exhibition 17 Feb - 13 Mar 2021 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Gow Langsford Gallery is pleased to present Threshold featuring new work by our represented artists. Embracing the diversity of our artists’ practices, this exhibition talks to the idea of new beginnings, welcoming change and fresh thinking as we move beyond 2020. Showcasing the work of artists such as James Cousins, Michael Hight, Max Gimblett, Dick Frizzell, Hugo Koha Lindsay, Gregor Kregor, Sara Hughes, Judy Millar, Virginia Leonard Simon Ingram, and Paul Dibble, Threshold gives insight into a broad range of artistic investigations, and is a sample of things to come. Read more

Dale Frank

18 Jan - 13 Feb 2021 Recent works by Australian artist Dale Frank. Read more