The Cool Show

A summer exhibition displaying some of the Collection’s cooler, more relaxed images

Last year’s Hot Show, which was put together for winter/spring 2010, has been replaced by a summer exhibition designed to display some of the Fletcher Trust Collection’s cooler, more relaxed images. The exhibition includes landscapes, some of them very old, particularly the 1826 engravings from Louis Isidore Duperrey’s Voyage autour du monde. Among the crew of the corvette La Coquille that sailed under his command around the Pacific including New Zealand in the years 1824 to 1825 were artists who saw island life as exotic. It is hard to resist the allure of these romanticised images even today.

There are landscapes from later artists as well, some of them well-known figures, such as Don Binney, Peter Siddell, Michael Smither, and Robin White, who were also attracted to Aotearoa’s seas and mountains. Other perhaps lesser-known figures featured include John Duncan, Rata Lovell-Smith, Charlton Edgar, and Olivia Spencer-Bower. Many of these paintings were purchased at auction during the 1970s and 1980s by Sir James and Lady Fletcher, who knew that people would enjoy them in their offices throughout the Fletcher complex at Penrose.

There is a group of summery still life garden paintings. Evelyn Page’s Tribute to China features large white lilies and a ceramic horse, while Jane Evans’ very loose watercolour Summer Garden I gives a vivid impression of drifts of colour in a closely planted garden. Among the abstract works included in the show are Milan Mrkusich’s magnificently glowing and mysterious Painting Green (1971) and his Painting III Green (Light) of over thirty years later. In these, no image is depicted.

Like Ian Scott and Robert McLeod, Mrkusich invites us to think about and enjoy shape, colour and texture in an abstract composition. Even the titles of the works discourage the viewer from making any associative connections with objects in the world outside the paintings themselves. The postcard image is of Joanna Braithwaite’s Afternoon Bather. This is an amusing painting of a rather snooty-looking woman, who is perhaps observing something not quite nice in the water nearby. The little study the artist did for the larger painting is also included in the exhibition.

—Peter Shaw

RICHARDSON, Harry Linley;

Waterwheel

c.1930, 285 x 400mm, Watercolour on paper

BOROUGHS, Justin;

Sumner Beach

1993, 515 x 1035mm, Oil on board

LE LIEVRE, Marie;

Tack Bag

2010, 700 x 650mm, Oil on canvas

TRENGROVE, Pauline;

Private: June

1986, 1500 x 1200mm, Acrylic on canvas

BINNEY, Don;

Te Henga from Man’s Head III

1971, 1370 x 1670mm, Oil on canvas

BINNEY, Don;

Eastern Journey

1962, 880 x 1210mm, Acrylic on board

LOVELL-SMITH, Rata;

Canterbury Landscape

c.1925, 360 x 450mm, Oil on canvas on board

PHILIPS, Margot;

Landscape with Blue-Green Bach

1962, 450 x 610mm, Oil on board

DUNCAN, John;

Landscape, Rotorua

1931, 305 x 350mm, Oil on board

RICHMOND, Dorothy Kate;

Lake Rotoroa, South Island

1931, 340 x 505mm, Watercolour on paper

WHITE, Robin;

Hoopers Inlet

1976, 1205 x 1205mm, Oil on canvas on board

NIGRO, Jan;

Pacific Festival

1983, 915 x 760mm, Oil on canvas

DOCKING, Shay;

City Amongst Tiered Cones

1970, 970 x 770mm, Oil pastel on board

WOOLLASTON, Toss;

Bayly’s Hill

c.1967, 1200 x 900mm, Oil on board

PEGLER, Johanna;

Kamakamakura, Holding Place

1995, 910 x 1830mm, Oil on canvas

DRAWBRIDGE, John;

Waikaremoana

1981, 775 x 580mm, Watercolour on paper

MAYO, Eileen;

Sunflowers

c.1965, 600 x 960mm, Oil on board

PAGE, Evelyn;

Tribute to China

1983, 595 x 495mm, Oil on canvas

EVANS, Jane;

Summer Garden I

1985, 715 x 1015mm, Gouache on paper

SHEPHERD, Michael;

Fennel, Rangiriri

1987, 575 x 790mm, Oil on board

MCLEOD, Robert;

Untitled

1981, 1500 x 1620mm, Oil on canvas

MRKUSICH, Milan;

Painting Green

1971, 1730 x 1730mm, PVA on canvas

FRIZZELL, Dick;

Big Landscape

1998, 1800 x 2700mm, Oil on canvas

FARR, Samuel Charles;

West Coast, South Island, with Mount Cook and Others, from the River Arahura, 1850

1898, 355 x 535mm, Oil on canvas

WATKINS, Kennett;

Toetoe, Northland

c.1875, 270 x 220mm, Watercolour on paper

KETTLE, Charles

View of the lower harbour Otago from Port Chalmers
1849, 396 x 745mm, Hand tinted lithograph by Trelawny Saunders, Colonial Library, London

MONKHOUSE, William, after a sketch by Thos. Thorpe

The New Dock at Dunedin, New Zealand
c.1875, Hand tinted lithograph

MRKUSICH, Milan;

Painting III Green (Light)

2004, 890 x 890mm, Vinyl on linen on board