July 2006

Exhibitions & Galleries

Geoff Tune
26 May - 16 July

New Zealand painter, Geoff Tune, born 1947, has been exhibiting regularly since 1969 and is represented in both public and private collections including the James Wallace collection and the Waikato Museum.
Between 1966-69 he attended the University of Auckland, gaining a Dip FA Hons and in 1970 Dip Tchng at Auckland Secondary Teachers Training College.
His works are highly sought after in the international market. In recent times, five of Geoffs works have found a home in the Cathay Pacific Airline lounge in Bangkok.
'The Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Artists' describes Tune as a painter who "works in oil, acrylic, graphite and coloured pencil, explaining his work as a personal response to time and place through referencing images/symbols on continuity and mortality".
Art theorist, Mark Kirby, describes in his essay on Tune's body of work, as visual memoirs. This is in reference to the highly personal nature of this art in which 'the artist records via the formal language and devices of painting, his scrutiny of where he was physically, emotionally and psychologically at a given period'.
Geoff currently lives in Mt Eden in Auckland.

Rowan Belcher
9 June - 16 July

Crochet Queen

ROWAN BELCHER

Born Solihull Birmingham U.K. 1954.

In the mid sixties in England the culture was intoxicating.
I was surrounded in art and music and have very intense memories of the times. Particularly hearing the music of the psychedelic era in the rural fields of Worcestershire at weekends where my friends and I would lie back in the long grassy fields wearing our hippie gear and listening to the likes of Sgt. Pepper on our transistor radios. This is where I spent the summer of love.
The Beatles song ‘All you need is love’ became my anthem of the times. From then on I knew that art and music were going to be my life.
These paintings are about the “summer of love”.
Individually they are responses to music, some of the music of the sixties particularly the Beatles, George Harrison and Joni Mitchell.
More recently on a train in Sydney I found myself humming the song “you turn me on I’m a radio” by Joni Mitchell it was like a mantra with the repetition of train noises. On my return I painted to the music on an already prepared pink surface (“who needs the static it hurts the head”), the result was an exciting visual experience.
Music fills me with the need to express myself with color.
I would like the viewer to experience the works and take something of them with them out into the world.

Heart-warming Quilts - Gisborne Quilters
30 June - 7 August

Taonga Tuku iho - Family Treasures
24 July - 3 September

Year 7 and 8 students from a number of our local schools will be exhibiting their stories and treasures at the Tairawhiti Museum.

This project has been a wonderful opportunity for students to research family history, and in particular a family treasure. The students have researched, shared their treasures, written about them, and presented them in a class book to be shared with the communities of the Tairawhiti.

From these books certain stories and taonga have been selected to exhibit in the Museum.

We are delighted to share these Stories and Taonga with you.

The house that Jack Built
21 July 27 August

Step into The House That Jack Built

This is the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt…

…that lies in the exhibition of The House That Jack Built toured by The Dowse.

The brand new show celebrates this remarkable picture book; a New Zealand retelling of the classic rhyming tale by acclaimed author and illustrator Gavin Bishop.

Tairawhiti Museum invites visitors to step into the picture-book world of The House That Jack Built. This is a magical insight into the story behind the book.

There are 21 of Gavin’s original works in pen and ink wash on display, as well as a te reo Mâori translation of his text. There will be activities for kids, too, as visitors step straight into Jack’s world.

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