Janneth Gil, After months of being without family as a new mother and trying to realise her husband’s dream of raising their daughter in New Zealand, Neha now has her closest family members with them, her mother, Shafia Begum, and younger brother Faysal. Archival pigment print on Harman by Hahnemuhle Gloss Baryta paper.
Colombian born, Christchurch-based artist Janneth Gil says that the events of 15th March in Christchurch were a reminder of the violence of her early life in Columbia, but she was heartened by the response from Christchurch residents and ‘the importance of familial and community support and the connections we form with others, and how these significant relationships are imperative for us to be able to confront and rise above adversity.’
Over the past two years Gil has built and maintained a close relationship with the city’s Muslim communities, creating and developing a series of projects that respond with affirmation to a greater understanding and tolerance by all communities to others. She has collectively named her projects Darkness into Light with her current exhibition at PGgallery192, Tribute: Darkness into Light, the first in a series to follow.
‘Through Darkness into Light I primarily wanted to immortalise these tributes as a metaphor for human empathy, solidarity, respect and support, and to emphasise the few good aspects this tragedy brought to our communities.’
March 2021 Edition SEE IT HERE.
Undoubtedly Bill Hammond was one of New Zealand’s greatest painters. Not merely in the trivial sense of the large sums his work went for at auction, but in terms of what he said about us as people.Bill was the supreme dissector of the Kiwi (admittedly predominantly Pākehā). His works from the 1980s were surrealist visions of an uptight,... Keep Reading
When the 15th March 2019 Mosque attacks happened, Colombian born, Christchurch-based artist Janneth Gil was immediately reminded of memories of her life in Bogotá in the 1980s and 1990s. The United States was then waging a war on drugs in Colombia in armed conflict with drug cartels, with civilians caught in the middle with the cartels... Keep Reading
Viv Kepes’ oil on linen paintings in Tribute - Bouquet take their subjects from the memorial flowers and bouquets spontaneously and cumulatively placed outside the entrance to the Botanic Gardens in Rolleston Avenue and at Al Noor Mosque on Deans Avenue following 15th March 2019. She maintains that they are, in part, a sensory experience... Keep Reading
I discovered Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history at high school in 1973 through Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith’s An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1827–1967. This is a history which has its origins in the appointment of the country’s first professional art gallery director in 1952, Eric Westbrook and his successor Peter Tomory at... Keep Reading
Founders and hosts of the annual Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, Annabel Menzies-Joyce and Peter Joyce will once again open their garden to the public over three weekends in March: Saturday and Sunday, 6th and 7th, 13th and 14th, and 20th and 21st March. As in previous years the exhibition provides support for... Keep Reading
Thieves’ Market considers concepts of orientation, spirituality, and acquisition, bringing a contemporary perspective on ancient processes to The National. Areez Katki’s intricate beadworks document the artist’s ongoing explorations of identity –navigating ancestral traditions of object making, and engaging with inheritances of... Keep Reading
DOG DAYS, a single-channel video, follows Issy Van Der Leden’s Cabin Fever (2020) with the same hectic vlog format. Van Der Leden leads her audience through internet rabbit holes and personal monologues in a search for the Jungian archetype of The Simp.Immediately we are introduced to ideas of astrology and mysticism in the opening... Keep Reading
In collaboration with writer and academic Dr Karlo Mila, printmaker Michel Tuffery’s Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, features new digital drawings, (and prints from the Handle with Care Series), that resonate within the 30 year history of his arts practice. Tuffery’s partnership with Mila has seen the realisation of the digital video Mana Moana... Keep Reading
Based in Central Otago, Megan Huffadine is an artist best-known for her wall-relief sculptures of objects conceived and crafted in mdf (medium density fibreboard). Yet, over the past 30 years she has also sustained a fundamental commitment to working with paint, experimenting with differing painterly surfaces and its textural qualities. Keep Reading
They could be aerial photographs of islands or the detail of an urban landscape surrounded by, and sharing space with a shifting and mountainous terrain. Porosities (the state of property or structure being porous) is the title of a new series of works by German-born artist Ina Johann that asks us to reconsider and look again at our... Keep Reading
Elizabeth Thomson, Cellular Memory: A Survey Exhibition Curated by Gregory O’Brien at the Aigantighe Art Gallery For over 30 years, Wellington-based sculptor/installation artist Elizabeth Thomson has been drawn to areas of scientific knowledge such as botany, micro-biology, oceanography and mathematics. In her art we encounter new ways of... Keep Reading
At the end of last year I started a new role at the Christchurch City Council; my full title is Community Arts Advisor. In the first few weeks when people would ask what I was doing I would clip the title and say “Arts Advisor”—it seemed more straightforward. It also mitigated any confusion around “Community Art”—a... Keep Reading
Based on the East Coast of the North Island, South African-born artist Angela Maritz and husband and family live in the Bay of Plenty. Maritz works on her acrylic on canvas paintings from her studio at home, exhibiting throughout New Zealand and internationally. She tracks her success as an artist, in reconciling feelings about... Keep Reading
Fiksate has reopened in its new gallery and studio space at 54 Hawdon Street. Artist and gallery manager Jenna Ingram says that they are ‘loving, being there in Sydenham in the Milfield Group's renovated warehouses in our new space. They have done an amazing job and been really great to work with. The “arts district” over this... Keep Reading
Lyttelton is embarking on a fundraising campaign for its new community-owned museum, Te Ūaka Lyttelton Museum, its name gifted by Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke, referring to a landing place, place of arrival, or a berthing or mooring place for a watercraft. Artist, events’ organiser and resident Gill Hay is overseeing the campaign... Keep Reading
ArtBeat