Developed by the Whangarei Art Museum. With thanks to the Rutherford Trust Collection, Wellington and the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui.

The Whangarei Art Museum is proud to bring you !!Über kewel!!, its home-grown tenth anniversary exhibition!

!!Über kewel!! is a user-friendly guide to art speak and art viewing. Featuring over 50 paintings, sculpture and ceramics from the Whangarei Art Museum Permanent Collection, as well as several loaned works from two major New Zealand Collections; Rutherford Trust, Wellington and the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui.

Also exhibited will be Double Cosmo 1972, a recent addition to the Whangarei Art Museum's its permanent collection, kindly gifted by the artist Don Driver.

This exhibition provides easy, simple explanations and advice towardsreading art via the keystone New Zealand art works on show. While aimed at the novice art viewer, !!Über kewel!! Has something to enrich everyone's art-going experiences.

Meeting contemporary art can seem confusing to the new viewer. We surround ourselves with Generation Y gadgetry, street cred tag-art, contemporary music and the 'hip-hop' culture of the iPod lifestyle - but our visual arts timeframe is stuck somewhere earlier in the mid-fifties. Why is this??

Simple text panels walk the viewer through definitions of art lingo and terms in a no fuss, easy manner.

'Meeting' paintings is really no more challenging than encountering a new acquaintance. It takes time to make the friendship.

The willingness to be quiet. To listen. And the openness to want to understand.

Empathy - being open to the world outside our own concerns is one of the most difficult of life-skills to acquire. Artists have chosen their visual language to help us perceive the world outside - and a world inside the minds of others.