Rita Angus, Moon, July 14th, 1965, crayon on paper. © Reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Rita Angus. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, on loan from the Estate of Rita Angus.
Photo Credit
Celestial art from Rita Angus, Andrew Beck and Séraphine Pick feature in Pages of Mercury, City Gallery’s companion exhibition to the highly anticipated upcoming show Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings.
The exhibition is centered around Angus’ Moon drawings, a series of sketches of the moon she started during the winter of 1965. Beck and Pick have been long fascinated by Angus’ drawings and the artistic possibilities they represent.
Pick is a painter, Beck a photographer. They have made new and collaborative works for this exhibition which blur their individual styles, processes and techniques to seek different outcomes—as Angus did with her Moon drawings.
City Gallery Senior Curator Aaron Lister describes the exhibition as ‘an atemporal exchange with and honouring of Angus, rather than simply being a response to her work.’
There are similarities between the work and lives of Angus and Hilma af Klint which makes this a perfect companion show to The Secret Paintings, says Lister.
'Of all her work, Angus’s Moon drawings — where she lifts her eyes to the night sky and to the unknown — edge closest towards af Klint’s mystical, heavily symbolic artistic language. 'Af Klint and Angus are pioneering figures of modernism, both countering and confronting the restrictions placed on women artists within their respective cultural contexts.'
af Klint felt the world was not ready for her art. She prohibited its display until 20 years after her death. Angus was similarly distrustful of her contemporaries, insisting that; ‘I paint for the next two generations’.
'In tracing this artistic relationship between Angus, Beck, and Pick, the exhibition also asks us to see or imagine another—that between af Klint and Angus' says Lister.
Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings will feature more than 100 of af Klint’s paintings, including The Ten Largest – exuberantly colourful paintings that are towering at three-plus metres tall, through which the artist explores the four stages of human development. City Gallery Wellington is the only gallery in Aotearoa to exhibit af Klint's work, which drew record breaking crowds when it was on show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum - its largest-ever audience in its 60-year history.
Opening Hours
- Monday - Sunday 10am - 5pm
- Closed 25 December
Address
- Civic Square, 101 Wakefield Street
- Wellington 6140
Celestial art from Rita Angus, Andrew Beck and Séraphine Pick feature in Pages of Mercury, City Gallery’s companion exhibition to the highly anticipated upcoming show Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings.
The exhibition is centered around Angus’ Moon drawings, a series of sketches of the moon she started during the winter of 1965. Beck and Pick have been long fascinated by Angus’ drawings and the artistic possibilities they represent.
Pick is a painter, Beck a photographer. They have made new and collaborative works for this exhibition which blur their individual styles, processes and techniques to seek different outcomes—as Angus did with her Moon drawings.
City Gallery Senior Curator Aaron Lister describes the exhibition as ‘an atemporal exchange with and honouring of Angus, rather than simply being a response to her work.’
There are similarities between the work and lives of Angus and Hilma af Klint which makes this a perfect companion show to The Secret Paintings, says Lister.
'Of all her work, Angus’s Moon drawings — where she lifts her eyes to the night sky and to the unknown — edge closest towards af Klint’s mystical, heavily symbolic artistic language. 'Af Klint and Angus are pioneering figures of modernism, both countering and confronting the restrictions placed on women artists within their respective cultural contexts.'
af Klint felt the world was not ready for her art. She prohibited its display until 20 years after her death. Angus was similarly distrustful of her contemporaries, insisting that; ‘I paint for the next two generations’.
'In tracing this artistic relationship between Angus, Beck, and Pick, the exhibition also asks us to see or imagine another—that between af Klint and Angus' says Lister.
Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings will feature more than 100 of af Klint’s paintings, including The Ten Largest – exuberantly colourful paintings that are towering at three-plus metres tall, through which the artist explores the four stages of human development. City Gallery Wellington is the only gallery in Aotearoa to exhibit af Klint's work, which drew record breaking crowds when it was on show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum - its largest-ever audience in its 60-year history.
