Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui with Senior Curator Greg Anderson.

The beautiful original building from 1919 sits in a prominent position near the town centre, with impressive views from front and back. Sightlines were obviously a big consideration in the design and planned redevelopment will preserve and enhance these. Prior to shifting the collection out of the gallery a section of the masonry ceiling fell out, grazing the marble bust of gallery founder Henry Sarjeant and revealing further damage underneath. It was obvious that the time had come to take action. Rated at only 5% of the current new building code, the original building is in dire need of earthquake strengthening and basic restoration, with various types of damage visible throughout the structure. Previous collection storage in the basement was also very inadequate. Luckily the central dome (pictured) remains intact although that too will require a degree of strengthening work. 

The gallery has an interesting and significant art collection of over 8000 items. I caught a glimpse of some of these works in storage ranging from historic European painters through to prominent New Zealand artists. Protecting it has been a challenge given the state of the building - no environmental or lighting control. Just getting access to items was a major issue in the confined spaces of the old excavated basement below the original building.  

In preparation for redevelopment and to mitigate earthquake risk the collection has been moved and a temporary location for the gallery at 38 Taupo Quay has opened. Fortunately the art collection was safe from recent floods which damaged much of this area of Whanganui, although the gallery space of the temporary building did have to be repaired. Moving the collection has been a huge but rewarding task. Over two thousand items with little or no documentation were uncovered during the process and inventoried. Some of these items will no doubt prove interesting to art history students of the future and will provide the gallery with previously unseen material for future exhibitions.

When the redevelopment occurs a new wing will be added to increase exhibition, education, amenities and storage space for the art collection. The design and position of the new wing behind the original building will ensure that the historic old building will still be the main feature visible from the town centre. View the flythrough here: http://sarjeant.org.nz/flythrough/

At the Sarjeant’s glass and object gallery located above the Whanganui iSite at 31 Taupo Quay, there are some intriguing works currently on view. Above the Whanganui tourism site are cast glass works by Emma Camden. These large, weighty forms reminiscent of architecture are really beautiful. Whanganui has a strong tradition in this area and it will be interesting to see more works in glass in future exhibitions. 

In the main gallery at 38 Taupo Quay there are collection works by Vivian Smith and Mary Green, artists who taught at Whanganui Technical College. The William Morris influenced floral designs are particularly appealing. Contemporary works on display include portraits of opera singers participating in the New Zealand Opera School in Whanganui by Felicity Priest, and a large work entitled “The Horses Stayed Behind” by Cat Auburn. This work by Cat Auburn is made of a multitude of Victorian style rosettes created from donated horse and pony hair, each identifiable and spread across four large panels.
More information about this work can be found here: 

http://www.artnews.co.nz/profile-winter-2015/

http://www.sarjeant.org.nz/site/pages/exhibitions/cat-auburn-the-horses-stayed-behind.php

Securing the funding for the proposed redevelopment of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui has been an extremely challenging task and it is a testament to the perseverance and dedication of Greg Anderson and his team that a significant portion of the funding required has already been secured. A quote on the wall in the staff area (pictured above) gave me some sense of just how daunting it must have seemed at times given the setbacks and the scale of the tasks involved.

Some of the larger works requiring restoration need additional funding to carry this out and hopefully donors can be found for these. It will be very exciting to see the whole project finally go ahead and it will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the city, the region and New Zealand culture. It will be a real pleasure to see a vision fulfilled at the opening in 2019 of the restored gallery and new wing.

Above: A beautiful large work by Edward Burne-Jones under wraps whose frame is awaiting conservation.

Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern

An artist recently told me an anecdote about Damien Hirst, it concerned an assistant who worked for him and who was reprimanded for speaking to Hirst at a staff party. Anecdotes such as this seem to be relatively common when talking about Hirst. Sometimes it is difficult to look at his work without bringing to it an awareness of all the gossip and cultural baggage that has accompanied his career and success. 

Claims of plagiarism have also provoked legal proceedings and perhaps undermined his position as an important artist. For example, the LA based artist Lori Precious claims Damien Hirst stole her ideas. She exhibited works composed of butterfly wings in the late 1990’s, years before Hirst exhibited works that are very similar. One wonders if Hirst’s assistants had to spend hours pulling wings off dead butterflies.

On a cold grey day in London I visited the large Tate retrospective of Damien Hirst’s work, (April-September 2012). One of the early works caught my eye - Boxes, 1998. A simple installation of brightly coloured cardboard boxes painted with household paint which clustered around a corner of a gallery space. It is a work that is designed to be variable and “fabricated new each time it is exhibited; it is a fixed number of boxes that may take any form.” (from the small guide to the exhibition). Something about the informality, budget materials and bright colours of this work really appealed. In contrast, some of his works use rather more expensive materials - “The Anatomy of an Angel”, 2008 is carved from Carrera marble and will no doubt last hundreds of years. 

Many people are also familiar with “For the Love of God”, 2007 Hirst’s sculpture which is a platinum cast of a skull encrusted with diamonds. This work has also been subject to claims of plagiarism, this time by artist John LeKay who produced a crystal covered skull in 1993. At the time the sale of “For the Love of God”, and subsequent media coverage created considerable publicity for Hirst. The work was eventually purchased by Hirst and an anonymous consortium of others. In works such as “The Golden Calf”, a calf with hooves dipped in gold, Hirst seems to mock the wealthy collectors, the curators and audience, “worshipping” a false idol, echoing the Bible story from Exodus where the ancient Israelites create and worship a golden calf because Moses is so long up Mt Sinai. 

Hirst’s preoccupation with death was apparent throughout the exhibition. “A Thousand Years” 1990 consists of a glass case with a severed cows head in it, which flies feed upon. Some are zapped with an insect-o-cuter and others reproduce. It is a really confronting and morbidly fascinating work. I’m not sure how people generally react to this work but it’s fair to say it probably prompts a feeling of disgust and perhaps a sudden inclination to embrace vegetarianism upon viewing. One of the things that has really stayed with me from the exhibition was the smell, not of rotting meat but a strange, unpleasant sort of metallic chemical smell, perhaps from the formaldehyde works.

Another work in the exhibition also used living creatures, this time living butterflies, in a work entitled “In and out of love”. Butterflies hatched from canvases with pupae attached. The room was filled with living and dying butterflies. A modest row of plants offered the butterflies some habitat. Tables with ashtrays of cigarette butts were also part of the installation. It suddenly felt like being in some small child’s nightmare. I can not help but contrast this part of the show with the fascinating Sensational Butterflies show at the Natural History Museum that we took our son to in 2013, which also had butterflies going through their life cycle but in a rather more lush and green setting.

I found the spot and spin paintings dull and unoriginal, but “Pharmacy” 1992, a replica of a pharmacy with cabinets full of pill boxes was interesting and the room full of surgical instruments was again morbidly fascinating. The displays in this room prompt the audience to contemplate death and the fragility of life. Hirst has been inspired by museum displays and this is a strong theme in his work. The animals in formaldehyde are scaled up versions of the sort you would see in a natural history museum.

I think after viewing an exhibition like this one I needed a good dose of something life-affirming, like a walk in the sunshine or a hug from a loved one. Unfortunately the grey London day did not provide any sunshine but I had better luck with the hug. I’ll make sure my next blog post is about something more joyful - I’ve got just the exhibition in mind.

Celeste Sterling, 2015

For plagiarism claims have a look here:

http://www.stuckism.com/Hirst/StoleArt.html

The Tate Gallery has a run through of the show with Hirst here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSb9QMlLoQ