Vault/2008
Tekoteko
15 November 2008 - 20 December 2008
This collection of Tekoteko - an ancestor figure which is found in either freestanding form or attached to the gable of a whare (house) features works in a variety of media made principally for the tourist market dating back to the early twentieth century. This collection belongs to distinguished curator, collector and writer Mick Pendergrast.
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Basalt Ware and Georgian Glass
11 October 2008 - 08 November 2008
The black bodied porcelain created by Joshua Wedgwood - Basalt ware - in the 1770's was inspired by the Etruscan black wares being excavated at Etruria in Italy. Wedgwood's Basalt ware was received with enthusiasm by the affluent upper and merchant classes and became so popular that over 170 other factories imitated it. Georgian glass too exhibits the elegant designs proliferating in eighteenth century England. With the advent of the cutting wheel, the Georgian glass makers of Ireland and England produced hand cut faceted glassware that has never been surpassed. This glassware was not just decorative like the overly fussy wares of the following century.
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More Than Beads
06 September 2008 - 04 October 2008
Beads have been made, traded and used since 38,000 BC - the first documented find. They have no purpose other than that which people assign to them and in various cultures and systems they have operated as repositories of sacred knowledge, possessors of curative powers, prompts for prayer and ritual, passports to the afterlife and standard units of value in market systems. They are among the earliest evidence of abstract thinking as they materialise abstract notions such as power and wealth. The emergence of the modern concept of jewellery is associated with the emergence of identity in relation to large scale communities and in many societies social differences were demonstrated through the display of adornment.
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A Point of Beauty
11 July 2008 - 22 August 2008
I began collecting hat pins because of my Grandmother. I loved hearing her stories about life in the "olden days". She talked about such things as lace-up boots, corsets and hat pins which fascinated me as a child growing up in the UK in the 1970's. She gave me my first three hat pins; the turquoise ones proudly displayed by my husband's Grandmother's silver elephant. Collecting came easy to me. My parents and I would frequent antique fairs where I would spend my hard earned pocket money. At the beginning there were too many to choose from, now it's a matter of hunting them out. But each purchase is as exciting as the first; they are all very special and often beautiful. Hat pins were functional, essential fashion accessories in their day and yet now seem almost ridiculous and impractical. - Sarah Cheesman
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The Floor Pictures of Beatrice Cross
27 May 2008 - 10 July 2008
After a career in the fashion industry, Beatrice Cross started making rugs for a new home in 1973. In the words of her daughter Jane Cross, after "looking at a plan of a Frank Lloyd Wright house she decided to base a first rug on the floor plan of her own new house. And having produced this first one she then enthusiastically embarked on 25 years of rag rug making, incidentally redefining the art of the rag rug, taking it out of it's homely, crafty origins and repositioning it firmly in the field of contemporary art."
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Requiem
29 January 2008 - 05 April 2008
Malcolm Harrison was a leading New Zealand artist and maker who died in November 2007. Working principally in the fields of embroidery textiles and from the late 1970s, he was very largely responsible for positioning those fields as areas of contemporary arts practice worthy of critical attention. In 2005, and to much acclaim, Malcolm Harrison was the inaugural recipient of the Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Fellowship and in the following year he presented 'Minus Reason' an exhibition of new work at Objectspace.
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