Jenna Packer Exhibitions

Navigators

11 Feb - 11 Apr 2017

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Artists

Exhibition Works

Lightfall: A View of Stewart Island
Peter James Smith Lightfall: A View of Stewart Island (2017)
Darkness Sets in with Solemn Silence
Peter James Smith Darkness Sets in with Solemn Silence (2017)
Dumont D'Urville at French Pass 1827
Peter James Smith Dumont D'Urville at French Pass 1827 (2017)
Cook as a Particularly Nice Person
Nigel Brown Cook as a Particularly Nice Person (2014)
What's Cooking?
Nigel Brown What's Cooking? (2014)
Captain James Cook - Female (In Pursuit of Venus)
Lisa Reihana Captain James Cook - Female (In Pursuit of Venus) (2016)
Ranginui
Lisa Reihana Ranginui (2007)
Eclipse
Ross Ritchie Eclipse (1995/96)
Whiringa-a-rangi / November
Robert Ellis Whiringa-a-rangi / November (2005)
Poututerangi / March
Robert Ellis Poututerangi / March (2005)
Trace 1
Graham Bennett Trace 1 (2013)
Trace 2
Graham Bennett Trace 2 (2013)
Navigation
Chris Charteris Navigation (2015)
NZ versus Australia - Nil All (Key Sports Division)
Michael Shepherd NZ versus Australia - Nil All (Key Sports Division) (2015)
President's Chain - Queen's Move
Michael Shepherd President's Chain - Queen's Move (2015)
Other Histories: Navigator III
Garry Currin Other Histories: Navigator III (2016)
Other Histories: Navigator II
Garry Currin Other Histories: Navigator II (2016)
Lens
John Edgar Lens (2014)
Nucleus
John Edgar Nucleus (2014)
Blue Moon
John Edgar Blue Moon (2014)
From burnt bush to point on Pukaki 2009
Wayne Barrar From burnt bush to point on Pukaki 2009
The Shine Falls from Boundary Stream, Hawkes Bay 2013
Wayne Barrar The Shine Falls from Boundary Stream, Hawkes Bay 2013 (printed 2015)
Falling Water at Waihopai River Dam Structure, Marlborough 2012
Wayne Barrar Falling Water at Waihopai River Dam Structure, Marlborough 2012 (printed 2012)
Mauri Ora
Chris Charteris Mauri Ora (2016)
Choirs of Etropedia Part I
Andy Leleisi'uao Choirs of Etropedia Part I (2013)
Iu of Pumalia
Andy Leleisi'uao Iu of Pumalia (2012)
Rummo Waits
Chris Heaphy Rummo Waits (2016)
The Shipping Forecast
Charlotte Handy The Shipping Forecast (2006)
Triffid
Hannah Beehre Triffid (2016)
Fox Fur
Hannah Beehre Fox Fur (2016)
Jack's Fall
Jenna Packer Jack's Fall (2014)
Salvage
Jenna Packer Salvage (2014)
Sons of Adam Smith
Jenna Packer Sons of Adam Smith (2013/14)
High Seas and Constant Stars [20985]
Christine Thacker High Seas and Constant Stars [20985] (2016)
High Seas and Constant Stars [20984]
Christine Thacker High Seas and Constant Stars [20984] (2016)
High Seas and Constant Stars [20979]
Christine Thacker High Seas and Constant Stars [20979] (2016)
High Seas and Constant Stars [20983]
Christine Thacker High Seas and Constant Stars [20983] (2016)
High Seas and Constant Stars [20980]
Christine Thacker High Seas and Constant Stars [20980] (2016)
Sightseer's Jug
Christine Thacker Sightseer's Jug (2006)

Exhibition Text

Navigators as a thematically linked exhibition traverses history and politics, and in that process we journey into the cosmos, revisit myth and cultural signifiers, go to sea and take a new look at the local environment.

Lisa Reihana’s Captain James Cook (Female), from the acclaimed In Pursuit of Venus work (now added to and being shown at the 2017 Venice Biennale, opening May) is an enthralling gender-bending re-imagination of the great explorer. Ranginui, (from the signature Digital Marae series) delivers the narrative of myth, flight and the night sky. Likewise, with rare authority, accuracy and breath-taking visual discipline, Hannah Beehre creates forever deepening cosmic space, utilising velvet, dyes and Swarovski crystals.

The historical subtexts and cultural plurality in Chris Heaphy’s Rummo Waits acts as a beguiling visual riddle and a time-bending journey; the viewer actively contributes to the work’s immense dialogues and its raft of possibilities.

Other Histories by Garry Currin delivers one of the key tenets of his work: being out at sea and looking back to a landscape that is appearing and disappearing simultaneously. His unique blending of sensation and fact, suggestion and place, in a process of hiding and revealing is wonderfully delivered. Peter James Smith is far more literal, using history, science, old navigation charts as mnemonic overlays on the sublime landscape. Robert Ellis explores Mt Eden’s diverse history – as a pa site, where colonial troops camped, streams flowed – by tilting and presenting it as a topographical landscape filled with multiple metaphors about time, valour, and belief, using trig stations as navigation signs.

Christine Thacker’s adventurous suite of jugs, High Seas and Constant Stars, is a wonderful celebration of form and the suggestive tales located in the surface mark-making. Chris Charteris carves stone, adding forms and patterns that become cultural objects. Inevitably, there resides in all his work sensations of geological time, geographical dispersal, ocean journeys; Polynesia.

The foreshore and seabed debate was one of the most significant dialogues of recent New Zealand political and social history. Michael Shepherd explores the farce that surrounded the debate to replace the current New Zealand flag. He utilises sand (as an actual medium), the still-contested seashore as place, and the metaphor of (the ever-changing) sandcastle as a stage, positing that there are many layers of meaning, previous flags and history demanding argument and expressing other core values.

Ross Ritchie’s very important painting Eclipse takes us back, in his characteristic manner, to Captain Cook, Omai and the transit of Venus. Jenna Packer likewise walks amongst the corridors of history, conflating time and place. The astonishing Sons of Adam Smith is a morality tale and a treatise on the economic orthodoxy that underpins the behaviours of Wall Street and how that ultimately affects us all. John Edgar also looks to the transit of Venus, exploring the lenticular form, found in geological formations, clouds, nuts, seeds, optical lenses, the discus and of course the phenomenon of space and celestial event.

Wayne Barrar navigates the local environment. He takes us to places most normally do not go, building wondrous poems of place. Nigel Brown re-examines Captain Cook, Graham Bennett uses sections of the globe and string navigation maps as core devices, asking where are we from? Andy Leleisi’uao invents silhouetted worlds and dynamic events that are erringly familiar. He builds tales of life and leisure, where time seems conflated and everyone is on an indeterminate journey back and forth.