Last year, The Chartwell Collection invited Galleries across Aotearoa to participate in a yearlong celebration of their 50^th Anniversary. Fittingly, their initiative put the focus on artists and highlighted the integral role of dealer galleries in how they built their collection. The Chartwell Collection began in Hamilton in the early 1970s and has emerged as a champion of visual arts in Aotearoa.  Their contribution in fostering local artists and supporting dealer galleries is unparalleled in this country.  We share a rich history with Chartwell and as Gary Langsford notes,

“Chartwell engaged with Gow Langsford right from our inception in 1987. At this time, only a few collectors acquired works by New Zealand artists, along with the public galleries which were notoriously underfunded for acquisitions. The Chartwell Collection became a significant part of the collector base and their strategic acquisitions not only supported the artists but also the handful of commercial galleries that existed.”

Likewise, founder Rob Gardiner wrote to me in a recent email,

“My location in Hamilton where Ev and I and family lived from 1962 to 2001 meant that connections to dealer galleries in Auckland were important to the growth of the Chartwell Collection and that included gaining confidence and understanding of the Charitable Trust model for acquisitions. Chartwell is not a private collection as was the usual model for ownership in New Zealand at that time. I would respond whenever I could to visiting shows when asked.”

Our immediate response to their invitation was to schedule an exhibition focused on the early days of our relationship with the Collection and the artists that Chartwell were exhibiting at their Hamilton gallery, the Centre of Contemporary Art, during the late 1980s-90s. Sue Gardiner generously shared their archives with us, which included handwritten notes, photographs, printed exhibition lists and the details of the earliest Gow Langsford acquisitions.  Using these and our own archives, we mapped out links between works, between artists and between Gow Langsford and Chartwell and over time settled on this exhibition of a trio artists who were prominent in these two decades: Allen Maddox (1948-2000), John Reynolds (b. 1956) and Julian Dashper (1960 – 1999).

At the heart of this grouping lies a shared focus on drawing, mark making and abstraction. For Chartwell, the 1980s saw a heightened interest in exploring large-scale abstract expressionist paintings, a trend that continued into the 1990s as acquisition practices evolved (ibid Rob’s email).

Although A Moment in Time: Dashper, Reynolds, Maddox examines a specific period in local art history, and visions have evolved over the years, it feels distinctly Chartwellean to us. This connection is underscored by personal memories, anecdotal links, and sometimes quirky associations.