Season 2, Ep. 09

Christchurch Art Gallery

Okay. So this post shall be brief and to the point. Nothing deeper than the title which is pretty self explanatory. The posts about the holiday at the South Island are wrapping up today with a post about the Art Gallery I visited while in Canterbury. 

I hadn't visited a proper Art Gallery since forever I feel. So it was much to my disappointment when I heard that the Christchurch Gallery may be shut and under construction since the earthquakes. That was an assumption anyway and that's what it looked like as I was walking up to the building from the side and that side was covered in scaffolding. But no, all good, false alarm, wide open to the public and quite an impressive building may I say. 

I first started at the top floor with my partner who after the first room decided to walk back downstairs, give me my time to view and wait. Lol, hash tag not for everybody. The range of art was just enough I reckon, not too tiny, you know, one room, 10 paintings and you're out, neither was it endless floors of art that you can't even remember the last one you viewed after.

The first room that really impressed me was The Golden Age. It was engravings on wood from the 20th Century. So impressive. The details on each piece were so carefully done that I almost started believing they're fake, no way someone could do this on wood. Indeed my friends, indeed. 

I looked through rooms that focused on New Zealand's history in paintings but the next room that caught my eye was post-modern art. These rooms always catch my eye and not always for the right reasons. Here I am looking through amazingly detailed paintings and engraved pieces of art from the 20th Century and then I walk into a room with a LARGE yellow painting, excuse me, 'painting', and... I'm supposed to read between the lines? I mean, that's just one woman's opinion but I never understood that kind of art. There's the artist that sheds blood, sweat and tears over an oil painting of a meadow for example, with excruciating detail you can almost see the little bird on the tree about to poop, and then there's the lazy 'post-modern' artist who prints a yellow canvas aaaand suddenly it's the hottest thing in the gallery. Come on...

Again, one woman's opinion, everyone is entitled to their own. Happy to hear yours. 

Anyhoos, yellow, shmellow, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire thing and finally I should mention the room named 'Pip & Pop'. It was a massive installation in a small room made from sugar, tiny objects, glitter, paint and portrayed the landscape allude to the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi*. So beautiful, so colourful, so yummy, so happy, it caused all the happy feelings I tell ya. 

Loved it. Hope you can love it as much as I did if you get a chance to travel down here or even through my photos. Now, this week is for art lovers, next week is for lovers. V-day.

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*Kintsugi