Two Exhibitions Opening Next Month At Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetū

Edwards + Johann: Mutabilities—propositions
to an unknown Universe:

14 September 2024
until 9 February 2025

Transformation is at the heart
of a captivating new exhibition opening at Christchurch Art
Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū next month.

It features
the work of Victoria Edwards and Ina Johann, Ōtautahi
Christchurch-based artists who have collaborated as
‘Edwards + Johann’ since 2007.

“The pair met
while working in art education during the 1990s, and
although they each had their own practices, they soon
realised that working together provided the opportunity to
push their artmaking into unexpected and exciting new
directions,” says curator Felicity Milburn.

“Their
collaboration is a kind of ongoing conversation that allows
them to move beyond individual egos to a third place where
they blend their shared histories with ideas from art,
literature, history and place.

Edwards + Johann use a
range of different materials and processes – photography,
drawing, collage, sculpture and more – often layering
these over each other so that their works evolve through
multiple states. Edwards
+ Johann: Mutabilities—propositions to an unknown
universe combines a selection of works from
the last five years with new sculptures – some still in a
state of ‘becoming’ – to deliver an intriguing and
transporting art experience.

Artistic residencies,
here and in Scotland, France and Switzerland, have been a
key part of Edwards + Johann’s practice, providing an
opportunity to absorb the atmosphere and history of
unfamiliar locations and then use this as a catalyst for
artmaking.

Their new exhibition is shaped by their
responses to two very different places – Ōtautahi
Christchurch and Whakaari White Island, located near
Whakatāne on the east coast of the North
Island.

Leo Bensemann: Paradise
Garden:

14 September – 9 February
2025

This September, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna
o Waiwhetū will exhibit a significant collection of
landscape works by the influential Ōtautahi artist Leo
Bensemann (1912–1986).

It will be the first
exhibition of the artist’s work since the February 2011
Christchurch earthquake forced the major retrospective,
Leo Bensemann: A Fantastic Art Venture, to
close.

That exhibition
was open for just 10 days before the earthquake struck, and
it would be five years before the Gallery would open its
doors again.

Leo
Bensemann: Paradise Garden opens on
Saturday 14 September and showcases the highly imaginative
landscape paintings that defined the later years of
Bensemann’s artistic career.

Curator Peter Vangioni
says that Mohua Golden Bay became an endless source of
inspiration for the artist.

“Bensemann lived and
worked in Ōtautahi, but he was born and raised in Mohua and
Whakakū Nelson. However, it was a 1965 holiday in Tākaka
that ignited his two-decade-long fascination with the
landscape there – especially the unique marble rock
formations found in the area,” Mr Vangioni
says.

“Playing with scale and surrealism, Bensemann
enlarged small pieces of rock to appear like gargantuan
geological forms, thrusting out of the
earth.”

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