Major artwork gifted to Christchurch

A major painting by one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded artists has been gifted to Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

Séraphine Pick’s monumental artwork, Everything Old is New Again (2011) was bought earlier this year by the W.A. Sutton Charitable Trust and donated to the city of Christchurch in memory of renowned artist Bill Sutton.

Gallery director Blair Jackson says he’s delighted to secure such an outstanding artwork for our city.

Seaphine Pick's artwork Everything Old is New Again has been gifted to Christchurch Art Gallery.

“This is a significant painting by one of New Zealand’s leading contemporary artists and we are extremely grateful to the Sutton Trust for their generosity in making this gift,” Mr Jackson says.

Garth Gallaway, Chair of the Trust, says they were equally delighted to be able to gift this wonderful work to the Christchurch Art Gallery.

“Séraphine Pick is an important New Zealand painter and this work is an enormously significant piece which rightly belongs in a public institution,” Mr Gallaway says. “We are thrilled that the work will reside in Christchurch which was, of course, home to Bill Sutton.”

Bill Sutton retired as senior lecturer in painting at the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts just before Séraphine Pick arrived there as a student in the 1980s. Her original and imaginative practice has since made her one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded painters.

The five and a half metre artwork features people hunched over phones and laptops while a female guitarist plays on barren, blasted ground. Figures in a variety of historical attire rise like wraiths at the edges of the image. It looks like the end of the world, and it looks like right now.

Everything Old is New Again is on display as part of a new exhibition of contemporary works from the Gallery’s own collection that offers different ways to think about time. In the exhibition, Now, Then, Next, different generations of artists explore the multiple anxieties of the future, or observe the persistence of the past in the present, says senior curator Dr Lara Strongman.

“These works invoke memory and nostalgia, anticipation and the feeling of longing for a future that may not come,” Dr Strongman says.

Now, Then, Next is on at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Entry is free.