Hector Dager

  Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Robert Smithson, Michelangelo... Yes, all the big names have just arrived on the Christchurch Art Gallery forecourt. They've been put there by local artist Matt Akehurst, whose signpost sculpture  You are here  tells you the exact direction and distance to a world-famous work by each of these artists, and by many more. While playing with the traditional assumption that New Zealand is something of an art-island, far removed from the international centres of culture, Akehurst's signpost also responds to the state of the arts in post-quake Christchurch. After all, with the Gallery closed for some time and its collections stored away, local art-lovers may feel newly conscious of everything – sheer distance, as well as seismic inconvenience – that can come between viewers and artworks.

  Welcome to the autumn edition of   Bulletin . The Gallery is currently getting ready to install an exhibition project that we’ve been working on for a number of years now.   Ralph Hotere: Ātete (to resist)  is the first major survey of Hotere’s artistic career for over twenty years, and includes works from collections across Aotearoa.  A partnership project between the Gallery and Dunedin Public Art Gallery, it has been on display in Dunedin since November last year, so we’re incredibly excited to finally be able to show it to our home audiences. The exhibition, which includes formative abstraction, powerful works of protest and landmark works including  Black Phoenix  and  Godwit/Kuaka , celebrates Hotere’s artistic achievements and brings his vision to a new generation. Here, the exhibition’s four curators all tell us a little about their relationship with Hotere, and how they connect with the artist’s works and the themes and locations that h...