The City Gallery Wellington is an art gallery in Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. The gallery was first opened in 1980 in a different building.

Features

Located in Civic Square

Civic Square, Wellington

Civic Square is an open public area at the centre of Wellington, New Zealand. It marks the boundary between the financial district to the north and the entertainment district to the south.- Textures and materials :...

, the Gallery is recognised as pivotal to Wellington’s positioning and growth as New Zealand’s arts capital, City Gallery Wellington plays a unique role in the New Zealand's cultural landscape. City Gallery mounts a changing programme of exhibitions and does not have a collection.
City Gallery Wellington re-opened in September 2009 after a year's closure for renovations. Three new gallery spaces were added, including one devoted to the exhibition of Maori and Pacific art, plus a new auditorium. The additions were designed by Wellington architect Stuart Gardyne of Architecture+. The Gallery reopened with the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years which achieved almost-record attendance.
Significant group exhibitions have included Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance, The Exhibition of the Century: Modern Masters from the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Techno Maori―Maori Art in the Digital Age, and the Prospect:New Art New Zealand triennial series. An integral part of the programme are artists' projects where a new body of work is profiled, including Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison is an American composer, influenced by both Western classical and North Indian classical music.Harrison studied composition at the University of Oregon and the Juilliard School in the late 1970s, and began investigating alternative tunings while studying Indian classical music with...

, Gavin Hipkins, Saskia Leek, Peter Madden, Seraphine Pick, and Yuk King Tan. The Michael Hirschfeld Gallery shows work by Wellington-based artists, designers and architects. The Gallery also regularly publishes catalogues to accompany its exhibition programme and runs an ambitious public programme of events, lectures and conversations. The education programmes focuses on delivery to primary and secondary schools in the Wellington region and nationally.

City Gallery Wellington is managed by the Wellington Museums Trust with major funding from the Wellington City Council. The façade of the building features ‘Fault’ an artwork by Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere, which was launched in 1994.

History

In the fifteen years since the 1993 opening at its current location, the City Gallery has hosted monographic exhibitions of major international artists such as Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

, Keith Haring

Keith Haring

Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...

, Rosalie Gasgoine, Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

 and Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

, Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...

, Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt is an Australian artist who primarily uses photography and video.Born in Brisbane in 1960, she holds a degree in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, graduating in 1982....

, Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan

Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.-Early life:Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and...

, Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist and hyperrealist sculptor. Her art work came to prominence in Australia in the late 1990s. In 2003 she was selected as the artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale....

, Pierre et Gilles

Pierre et Gilles

Pierre et Gilles, Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard, are French artists and romantic partners. They produce highly stylized photographs, building their own sets and costumes as well as retouching the photographs...

, Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE is an English painter who is one of the foremost proponents of Op art.-Early life:...

, Sam Taylor Wood, Salla Tykkä

Salla Tykkä

Salla Tykkä was born in 1973 in Helsinki, Finland, where she lives and works today. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts 2003. She has been working with photography, video and film since 1996, and she had her first solo show in 1997....

, Stanley Spencer

Stanley Spencer

Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...

, Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...

 plus New Zealand's own Laurence Aberhart

Laurence Aberhart

Laurence Aberhart is a New Zealand photographer. He was born in Nelson in 1949, along with four siblings, but moved to Lyttelton in the late 1960s, before finally moving to Russell where he still lives and works today. Aberhart travels often and has produced many collections of photographs taken...

, Rita Angus

Rita Angus

Rita Angus was a New Zealand painter born in Hastings. Along with Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, she is credited as one of the leading figures in twentieth century New Zealand art...

, Shane Cotton

Shane Cotton

]Shane Cotton is a major New Zealand painter. Born in Upper Hutt with Ngapuhi iwi affiliations, he studied at the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, graduating in 1988. He then lectured at Massey University in Palmerston North....

, Tony Fomison

Tony Fomison

Tony Fomison was a notable artist in New Zealand. He was an important post-war visual artist in the country and influenced New Zealand art by incorporating elements of narrative and myth into contemporary art....

, Bill Hammond, Ralph Hotere

Ralph Hotere

Hone Papita Raukura "Ralph" Hotere is a New Zealand artist of Māori descent . He was born in Mitimiti, Northland and He is widely regarded as one of New Zealand's most important living artists...

, Ronnie van Hout, Melvin Day

Melvin Day

Melvin "Pat" Day, CNZM is a New Zealand artist and art historian.Day was born in Hamilton, New Zealand. At the age of eleven, Day began Saturday morning classes at Elam School of Art, University of Auckland, under the tuteleage of Archie Fisher, John Weeks, Lois White and Ida Eise...

 and Boyd Webb.

In 1993 the Gallery moved to its present location on the north-eastern side of Civic Square

Civic Square, Wellington

Civic Square is an open public area at the centre of Wellington, New Zealand. It marks the boundary between the financial district to the north and the entertainment district to the south.- Textures and materials :...

, into the old Wellington Public Library building, after the latter was refurbished. Built in 1940 in an Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 style, the gallery's current building originally housed the Wellington Public Library - replacing the original red brick City Library building of 1893. In 1991 the Library moved into a new ‎Wellington Public Library

Wellington Public Library

Wellington City Libraries in Wellington, New Zealand has over 600,000 books. There are 12 branches of the Wellington City Libraries, the largest of which is the Wellington Central branch.-Branches:...

next door.