Concurrent Exhibitions: 7 April - 25 May, 2008

Subjects to Hand - Joanna Margaret Paul
Drawings and DVD of Short Films

A selection of more than 70 exquisite drawings and short films by the late Joanna Margaret Paul. Over nearly four decades, using the simplest of drawing materials and looking no further than her physical surroundings, Paul accumulated a body of work brimming with graphic invention and poetic observation.

A 140 page full colour book will be available at the gallery, or from bookstores nationwide.

[back to top]

The Hand as Subject - imagery of the hand

Peter Peryer, Janets Hand, 1993, vintage print on paper. Courtesy Ferner Gallery Auckland

In association with Mark Hutchins Gallery Wellington James Wallace Trust Auckland, Ferner Gallery Auckland, the artists and works from the Whangarei Art Museum Collection

The Hand as an object for creative human iconography is NOT a fresh subject for exhibition exploration! After all it was the subject for Neolithic society’s first public gallery spaces – cave paintings more than 20,000 years ago !

Closer to our own timeframe has been “Show of Hands” the opening exhibition at the Manawatu Art Gallery in 1975 and 30 years later; “Return of the Hand; The Hand in art and culture” at the Sarjeant Gallery in 2005 which included works from the Whangarei Art Museum collection. A more recent exhibition at the Mark Hutchins Gallery in Wellington “The Language of Touch” was a further inspiration to reformulate an exhibition here to complement and compliment the late Joanna Paul’s adroit handling of her own medium of drawing, and its metaphysical and narrative impact in the tribute Subjects to Hand exhibition concurrently showing at the art museum.

The Hand as Subject is an engaging and powerful exhibition of works by nationally and internationally renowned artists Peter Peryer, Robert Jesson, Philip Trusttum, Robert Ellis, Rebecca Swan, James Robinson, Greer Twiss and Terry Stringer, Tony Lane, Megan Jenkinson and two eminent local artists Grant Beran and Ellen Smith.

The exhibition in the Contemporary Gallery space at WAM includes a rich and inventive plethora of creative media from patinated bronze to cibachrome collage, oil and gold leaf on gesso, galvanised steel and digital prints – materials from the old world and the new. Photography, sculpture and paintings by many of the most notable names in current art practice. Visitors to the Whangarei Art Museum will enjoy a truly visual feast in Subjects to Hand and The Hand as Subject parallel exhibitions.

[back to top]