The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is a contemporary art museum at New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand. The gallery receives core funding from the New Plymouth District Council. Govett-Brewster is recognised internationally for contemporary art. [1]
The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is a contemporary art museum at New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand. The gallery receives core funding from the New Plymouth District Council. Govett-Brewster is recognised internationally for contemporary art. [1]
The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery had its beginnings through a gift by New Plymouth resident Monica Brewster (nee Govett 1886–1973) who transferred £50,000 in stocks, funds, shares and securities to the City of New Plymouth in 1962. The fund was to establish and develop a public art gallery (in1970, the year the gallery eventually opened, she would make a second bequest for £72,000 to start a permanent art collection). [2]
In 1967 a 24 year old Australian teacher John Maynard arrived in New Plymouth having been appointed director to develop a contemporary art gallery. Maynard had no interest in setting up a conventional local body gallery and after touring the country saw that, “artists are where the action is.’ [3]
Maynard oversaw the Regent cinema building conversion by New Plymouth architect, Terry Boon [4] and developed the collection policy that focused on new forms of art and sculpture fostering the development of artists from New Zealand and the Pacific Rim and allowed for the deaccessioning of unwanted items. [5] The gallery opened on 22 February 1970 with the exhibition Real Time [6] by Leon Narby. Art critic Hamish Keith described the installation as, 'setting New Zealand art off to the kind of start it should have in the Seventies…Real Time has as its basic mechanism real life, and that itself is a major breakthrough.’ [7]
The gallery opened an extension designed by New Plymouth firm Boon Cox Goldsmith Jackson in 1998. The extension was principally undertaken to provide exhibition and storage space for the Len Lye Foundation Collection along with a dedicated education space. [8]
The Len Lye Centre is an extension to the Govett-Brewster, built to display the works of Len Lye. It was designed by Andrew Patterson of Pattersons Associates, New Zealand. It is home to the archives and studio collection of the Len Lye Foundation. [9] Born in Christchurch in 1901 and largely self-educated, Len Lye was driven by a lifelong passion for motion, energy and the possibility of composing them as a form of art. Lye's interests took him far from New Zealand; after sojourns in the South Pacific, Lye moved to London and then New York, where he became known as an intensely creative film-maker and kinetic sculptor.
The Len Lye Centre was opened on 25 July 2015. This is the first gallery in New Zealand to be dedicated to a single artist. [10]
The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery has received many awards.
The Govett-Brewster has produced a number of notable or landmark exhibitions:
The Govett-Brewster has produced publications to accompany many of its exhibitions alongside stand-alone texts.
In 2016 the Govett-Brewster published Now Showing: A History of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery outlining 45 years of exhibition making at the gallery. The publication was edited by Christina Barton, Jonathan Bywater and Wystan Curnow with essays by Barton, Curnow, Jim and Mary Barr, Rhana Devenport, and a foreword by then director, Simon Rees. Now Showing also included ‘Forty Five Moments’, a selection of illustrated highlights from the previous 45 years of gallery activities with accompanying texts by Paul Brobbel, Tyler Cann, Susette Goldsmith, Simon Rees and Mercedes Vicente. [26]
Other notable releases include:
Leonard Charles Huia Lye was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives including the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950, much of his work went to New Zealand after his death, where it is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth. He is best remembered for his 1933 short film "experimental Animation 1933," better known as "The Peanut Vendor."
Andrew Drummond is a New Zealand painter and sculptor. He attended University of Waterloo in Canada, graduating in 1976. He was a Frances Hodgkins Fellow in 1980.
Billy Apple was a New Zealand artist whose work is associated with the London, Auckland and New York schools of pop art in the 1960s and NY's Conceptual Art movement in the 1970s. He worked alongside artists like Andy Warhol and David Hockney before opening the second of the seven New York Not-for-Profit spaces in 1969. His work is held in the permanent collections of Tate Britain, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Gallery of Australia, Te Papa, Auckland Art Gallery, the Christchurch Art Gallery, the University of Auckland, and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Belgium.
Dame Cheryll Beatrice Sotheran was a New Zealand museum professional. She was the founding chief executive of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and was credited with the successful completion of the museum, considered the largest international museum project of the 1990s.
Lisa Marie Reihana is a New Zealand artist. Her video work, In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] (2015), which examines early encounters between Polynesians and European explorers, was featured at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
The Walters Prize is New Zealand's largest contemporary art prize.
Rhana Jean Devenport is an Australian-born art curator and museum professional. She was director of the Auckland Art Gallery from 2013 to 2018, after which she became director of the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. She has announced that she will be moving to Sydney at the end of her contract on 7 July 2024.
Monica Romaine Brewster was a New Zealand arts patron and women's rights advocate. She is best known as the founding benefactor of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Merylyn Tweedie is a multi-media artist from New Zealand. In 2004 she won the Walters Prize, New Zealand's largest contemporary art prize, and in 2003 her work was selected to represent New Zealand at the Venice Biennale.
Ruth Buchanan is a contemporary New Zealand artist of Te Āti Awa, Taranaki, and European decent. Buchanan was born in New Plymouth and grew up in Wellington. She lives and works in Berlin.
Luise Fong is a Malaysian-born New Zealand artist.
Roger John Horrocks is a New Zealand writer, film-maker, educator and cultural activist.
Darcy Bruce Espie Lange was a New Zealand artist born in Urenui. Lange studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts (1964–1967) creating hard-edge abstract sculptures before studying at the Royal College of Art in London and shifting his focus to moving image and photography.
Mary-Louise Browne is a New Zealand artist, best known for her public word ladders, and other works using text. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Te Papa, Auckland Art Gallery and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Denise Kum is a New Zealand artist. Her works are held in the collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the University of Auckland art collection.
Anton Parsons is a New Zealand sculptor. His work often contain letters and numbers, sometimes in Braille or Braille-like codes, these are typically arranged along linear of curvilinear surfaces. Some of his early work consisted of meticulously crafted oversize pencils and other writing equipment. Later he produced a series of works involving oversized Braille often in collaboration with the blind poet Dr. Peter Beatson of Palmerston North. The Braille works were followed by a series of works designed to fit in gallery doorways, they consisted of vertical plastic strips similar to a cheap fly screen.
Robert Leonard is a New Zealand art curator, writer, and publisher.
John Maynard is an Australian film producer and film distributor who also played an important role in the development of New Zealand art museums.
Sorawit Songsataya is a Thailand-born New Zealand artist based in Wellington.
Ronald Norris O'Reilly was a librarian who promoted and exhibited contemporary New Zealand art. He served as Christchurch city librarian from 1951 to 1968, and director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery from 1975 to 1979.
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