Ashburton Art Gallery

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Nau mai haere mai

Welcome to the Ashburton Art Gallery. Officially opened on 16th September 1995, the Ashburton Art Gallery currently occupies the top floor of the refurbished former Ashburton County Council building, which is centrally sited behind the town clock tower in the Baring Square East gardens.

The Ashburton Art Gallery presents a varied, thought provoking and innovative programme of locally, nationally and internationally sourced exhibitions. Wherever possible the Gallery supplements its visual arts programme by presenting artists' talks, education, music and performing arts events.

Ashburton Art Gallery


Our Vision

 

Coming Soon

Freakquent Viewing: An interactive installation by Jane Venis 19th July-17th August 2008 Opening Saturday 19th July.

     Jane Venis's exhibition Freakquent Viewing is an interactive installation which invites audience members to take part. Venis encourages visitors to attend the opening dressed as carnival folk, freaks or reality television personalities therefore offering participants the opportunity to become truly immersed in the work. Freakquent Viewing invokes a fairground or circus - carnival booths conceal television screens with content with critiques the contemporary phenomenon of reality TV shows. Venis's fairground organ or "Snurglaphone" has been constructed from parts of vintage cars. Shiny copper horns sprout from its top and sides, emitting music and strange sounds. A control panel presents the viewer with a number of buttons which when pushed change the sounds produced, from elephants trumpeting and horses galloping to a selection of musical works composed by and played by Venis and other band members on her own constructed instruments.





Junk to Funk Art Awards 2008 19th July-17th August 2008 Opening Saturday 19th July 1.30pm.

     The Junk to Funk Art Awards is a uniquely Ashburton Art Awards that encourages artists nation wide to submit works which focus on the use of or discuss issues associated with recycled materials.

Jasmin Lamorie's "All the Trimmings" uses the detritus of body beautiful to construct a new and sensual soft furnishing for the modern home. This work is made of human hair collected from local hairdressers. It has been sorted by colour and length then attached to fabric (from the recycling centre) using shade-cloth to provide a sturdy backing.

The work draws parallels between land and body, hair and forest. It reflects the similarities in the way contemporary society assigns value to both land and body; depending on how well trimmed it is. We control and tidy our bodies and the land; we keep them in order, for beauty and for economics.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Friday 10am-4pm
Wednesdays 10am-7pm
Saturday & Sunday 1pm-4pm
Closed Mondays and Public Holidays

Ashburton Art Gallery
Baring Square East
PO Box 573
Ashburton

Ph/Fax: 03 308 1133
Mobile: 021 105 2230
Email: info@ashburtonartgallery.org.nz
Web: www.ashburtonartgallery.org.nz

Admission Free
(Donation/koha appreciated)

Kathryn Mitchell Manager/Curator
Alison Curwood PA/Exhibitions Assistant
Martin McCully Technician/Marketing Distribution
 

David Elliot

     I was born in Ashburton and lived here for the first seventeen years of my life. I then went to Christchurch, where I studied for the Diploma in Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, graduating in 1976. I then worked as a designer for a couple of years, before travelling to Antarctica, then onto Asia and Europe, before settling in Scotland, where I was gatekeeper at Edinburgh Zoo for two years. During this period I became increasingly interested in writing and illustrating books for children. www.davidelliot.org

On returning to New Zealand in 1984, I resumed work as a designer, but hoping that teaching might afford me more time to follow my interest in books (a vain hope, I'm afraid), I trained to be a teacher, and taught art to secondary students, fulltime, from 1986 to 1998. During this time, while my own two children were still young, the time available to me for writing and illustrating was severely limited and this is reflected in my creative output - three picture books, plus book covers and some illustrating for educational books.

Since 1998, however, with the support of my wife, I have been working fulltime on my own writing and illustrating and, as a result, I have been able to take on an increasing amount of illustration work.

When I was a little boy, my grandfather told me there was a wolf in the plantation, opposite his farm in Mayfield. I have been trying to draw it ever since.

   

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© Ashburton Art Gallery 2008