Festival Season at City Gallery Wellington

Work by three distinctly different artists share the bill for City Gallery Wellington’s contribution to the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

The Festival Season three exhibitions are Janet Cardiff: The Forty-Part Motet, Trans-Form: The Abstract Art of Milan Mrkusich, a major showing of one of New Zealand’s most revered abstractionists, and Séraphine Pick, a large-scale survey on one of our foremost figurative painters.

Gallery director Paula Savage says this will be the first chance for New Zealand audiences to experience the work of international artist Janet Cardiff.

“This truly stunning sound work appeals on both musical and purely emotional levels. To be able to show this piece alongside the work of two of New Zealand’s leading painters Milan Mrkusich and Séraphine Pick is a real privilege.”

Beguiling and unforgettable, The Forty-Part Motet (2001) by Canadian artist Janet Cardiff is a sound installation that packs an emotional punch. Visitors hear the work before they see it, as traces of music escape the gallery confines, hinting that a live performance is taking place. On entry, however, visitors encounter a ring of speakers on individual stands, each speaker taking the place of an original performer. In this dramatic installation, the Salisbury Cathedral choir sing a reworking of Spem in alium nunquam habui (1573) by Thomas Tallis, one of England’s most influential Renaissance composers.

Upstairs, the exhibition Séraphine Pick fills the North and South Galleries. Curated by Felicity Milburn of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, this large-scale survey offers visitors a spectacular insight into the original and richly imaginative practice of Wellington-based Séraphine Pick, one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded painters.

“You want a landscape? Take a drive in the country.” Milan Mrkusich’s blunt piece of advice to Woman’s Weekly readers in 1969 was made in the face of intense hostility towards abstract art. Over forty years later, Mrkusich remains firmly committed to abstract painting and is considered one of New Zealand’s most important living artists.

Trans-Form provides a unique opportunity to experience first hand Milan Mrkusich’s potent use of form, line and colour over four decades of abstract painting.

A programme of public events will support the exhibitions, providing visitors with a deeper understanding of the works on show.

The Festival Season
Seraphine Pick, Janet Cardiff, Milan Mrkusich
20 February –16 May 2010
Free Entry
City Gallery Wellington
Civic Square, Wellington
Ph: 04 801 3021, citygallery@wmt.org.nz www.citygallery.org.nz