Nō Konei | From Here

9 November 2024 – 11 May 2025

Free Entry

Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery’s opening season is named Nō Konei | From Here. This generous opening programme features over 200 artworks, spanning four centuries of European and New Zealand art history. Displayed across the breadth of the gallery’s newly expanded exhibition spaces, works will range from traditional gilt-framed paintings to contemporary practice in a variety of media.

Nō Konei | From Here includes pieces that reflect the breadth of the diverse and nationally significant Collection of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery, alongside newly commissioned works by artists with a strong connection to the region. 105 years since the gallery first opened and, after a ten-year hiatus from operation at Pukenamu Queen’s Park.

The opening season represents the gallery’s unique story. Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery’s curatorial team have chosen works that are imbued with the magic of the makers who walk among us – the artistic sightseers of our lives who traverse the terrain of the real and imagined, who show us and make us feel things we can’t quite put our finger on, our histories and memories. The curatorial team have created an exhibition which traverses the gallery’s spaces and collection, aiming to create conversations that span across time and media.

Many of the contemporary pieces in Nō Konei | From Here, are works created by artists who are alumni of the gallery’s Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence programme, established in 1986. These works were made in response to Whanganui, and will be shown with newly commissioned works by over twenty current practitioners. The artists chosen for this exhibition represent diverse points of view and voices, the commonality being their link to here and what the kaupapa ‘nō konei’ evokes for them.

Also featured are solo artist projects by Matthew McIntyre-Wilson (Taranaki, Ngā Māhanga and Titahi), Tia Ranginui (Ngāti Hine Oneone) and Alexis Neal (Ngāti Awa & Te Ātiawa). The origin of each of these individual projects is deeply embedded in Whanganui, and each of these new bodies of work have been years in the making, contributing to a thoughtful and connected opening season.

A major new survey of celebrated Whanganui painter Edith Collier (1885-1964) will also be on show (9 November 2024 – 16 February 2025). Curated by Jill Trevelyan, this exhibition and its accompanying book, published 9 September 2024, places Collier as one of the leading lights of early Modernist painting in New Zealand.