Decade of revolution and evolution at New Gallery

Jenny Gibbs

This week Auckland Art Gallery's New Gallery celebrates its 10th birthday, but it may also have to address a backlog in rent payments.

Gallery director Chris Saines, speaking at an anniversary function on Saturday, joked about the oversight. He explained how the New Gallery's building had been gifted for a peppercorn rental of $1 a year by philanthropist Jenny Gibbs, but he wasn't sure if that payment had been made yet.

Jenny and Alan Gibbs established the Auckland Contemporary Art Trust and bought the former telephone exchange building that houses the New Gallery after being inspired by a New Zealand visit in the early 90s from the Museum of Modern Art's International Council, of which Jenny was a member.

"They came on a group tour here and there was some comment about the fact that we only had the one gallery," she says. "They were interested in the fact that we didn't have a contemporary art space.

"I said to a very elderly Texan woman, who's a major philanthropist in the States, 'Alan and I are thinking of making provision for something that we'll leave in our wills - some money to provide a contemporary art space.'

"She said, 'Jenny, darlin', why don't you do it now? Why wait 'til you're dead? Get the pleasure of seeing it happen."'

Although there were no initial financial contributions from Auckland City Council, Gibbs was able to source substantial amounts of money from the ASB Trust, the Lotteries Commission, Trevor Farmer's family trust, Friends of the Gallery and Rob Gardiner's Chartwell Trust.

As well as ongoing support, in 1997 Gardiner's contribution was substantially extended by placing the Chartwell Trust's extensive collection of contemporary art with the Auckland Art Gallery on long-term loan, where it found an ideal home.

"The New Gallery has been well suited to exhibit challenging works in the collection such as the et al. installations, the huge old Massey tractor of Scott Eady's, the installation of the 11 heads by Stephen Birch and video works as well," says Gardiner.

"This has often enabled new work from New Zealand and Australia to be seen soon after acquisition."

Among the New Gallery's inaugural exhibitions was Korurangi: New Maori Art, which provided several challenges, resulting in what the then principal curator Alexa Johnston described in the accompanying catalogue as "cultural collisions". Aside from some delicate protocol negotiations, Korurangi generated headlines when Diane Prince's installation of a New Zealand flag on the floor was deemed illegal by police.

Planning for Korurangi coincided with the development of a long-term strategic plan by former Auckland Art Gallery director Christopher Johnstone, which recommended more Maori art be shown and purchased by the gallery.

"Korurangi was a show that pushed back at what curator George Hubbard doubtless saw as the conventions and constraints of its host institution," says Saines, who took over as director in February 1996.

"To that extent, I think the New Gallery provided a kind of cultural safety valve, where the pressure could be turned up or down in a way that didn't ultimately connect with the life of the main gallery.

"I think Korurangi changed the way the gallery worked with contemporary Maori and Pacific artists from that moment on, in an incredibly positive way. But if Korurangi had something of the whiff of a revolution I think there's been plenty of evolution in that space ever since.

"Korurangi spurred the formation of the gallery's Maori advisory group, Haerewa, and this led in turn to the later establishment of a Maori curator's role," he adds.

Ngahiraka Mason, who now has the role of indigenous curator, Maori art, began as a security guard in 1994 while still a student before becoming one of the New Gallery's original guides, who led bilingual tours of Korurangi.

"Korurangi provided me with first-hand experience as an interpreter, which opened up a range of ideas I wanted to explore in [2001's] Purangiaho: Seeing Clearly," she says.

"I was thrilled to experience the ideas, imaginings and realities that artists were expressing through their art."

Pre-empting the development of London's Tate Modern by five years, the creation of a separate space for contemporary art was a bold move closely watched by other galleries.

"Tate Modern expanded the base for the Tate's contemporary international holdings and programmes, while the New Gallery expanded it for contemporary art across the board," says Saines. "They are both part of a worldwide drive in the late 20th century to create new and more flexible spaces in response to new art forms."

"It was a novel approach at the time, offering a new set of possibilities," says John McCormack, co-director of dealer gallery Starkwhite, who was then the director of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

"In Dunedin we were taking a different approach to the one adopted by The New, thinking through ways to marry art history and contemporary art in one building."

The cultural landscape has changed over the 10 years since the New Gallery was established, with galleries like Artspace becoming more prominent, and the arrival of St Paul St and the Gus Fisher Gallery. Dealer galleries like Starkwhite have also begun working in a similar fashion to public galleries, generating publications, working with curators and showcasing experimental projects from artists.

Artist John Reynolds was commissioned to design the New Gallery's logo, supplying more than 100 variations in the hope that it could be regularly updated and that other artists would also be used.

"Any consideration of the New Gallery and its brief must make reference to the role Artspace plays in the scheme of things," he says. "However, Auckland is fortunate to have both venues, and they have independently and productively complicated the local visual arts environment."

Says McCormack: "The Auckland Art Gallery has a lot more room to move than other galleries because it has great patrons with deep pockets, but more importantly they bring ideas to the mix and a great enthusiasm for new initiatives, particularly those likely to appeal to artists,"

Jenny Gibbs, who helped to establish the biennial Walters Prize, says major projects like that and the Auckland Triennial couldn't have happened without the New Gallery. Other highlights have included Ndebele, Transformers, Sound Culture and Mixed-up Childhood, which was curated by former Artspace director Robert Leonard.

The New Gallery's role in Auckland will soon be radically challenged more than ever when the main gallery closes for major redevelopment next year, condensing Auckland Art Gallery's entire operation into one building, which has less than 30 per cent of the current total floor-space.

"I believe it is vital the role of the New Gallery is maintained, advanced even, during the upcoming rebuilding phase," says Reynolds. "This must be seen as an opportunity to develop the venue or 10 years of achievement and value will be lost.

"Locally and offshore there are many examples of temporary/contemporary spaces flourishing during substantial building programmes," he adds, citing Wellington's Shed 11 and MoMA's PS1 as examples.

"This is a great opportunity to start modelling and messaging the future," says Saines. "I want to see us trialling new ways of installing and using the collections and bringing out clear points of difference in the shows we present.

"We might also do ad hoc interventions off-site, reminding people that we have not gone away and will be back in a very different form in 2009."

"Looking back I think the gallery got a lot right with the New, but failed to push things as far as some in the art world had hoped for," says McCormack. "Now it's time for the gallery to reflect on what worked as it thinks about the future and the possibilities offered by a revamped and physically enlarged gallery."

When the main gallery re-opens with substantially larger facilities in 2009, it is possible that the original need for a separate contemporary space could disappear.

Saines says it is too early to know how the programme for the redeveloped main gallery will work, so "the jury is still out" on how the New Gallery's role will be redefined.

"There's a whole lot of possibilities and we've all very consciously left all our options open because I think you have to with new projects," says Gibbs.

"I am convinced that if shows of the evident calibre of Mixed-up Childhood and the Auckland Triennial had a bigger and more integrated platform, such as the newly developed gallery will offer, they would draw in a much broader audience," says Saines. "However, the New Gallery could continue to offer an exciting space for programming by exception or a space for artist's project or experimental work."

What: Happy Birthday to New!
Where and when: New Gallery, to Nov 20