Installation view. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Ann Verdcourt, Trying To Enter the Promised Land (detail), 1992. Collection of The Dowse Art Museum, purchased 1993. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Installation view. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Installation view. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Areta Wilkinson, The Herbal Mixture (detail), 2000. Photo: Collection of The Dowse Art Museum, purchased 2001. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Brent Wong, Tide of Change, 1969. Collection of The Dowse Art Museum, purchased 1971. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Installation view. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Solid Ground. Installation view. Photo: Shaun Mathews
Solid Ground brings together a selection of unconventional landscapes from The Dowse Collection, moving beyond figurative painting to include abstract works, photography, sculpture and printmaking.
Using landscape as a form of personal expression, the artists in Solid Ground reflect on the history, culture and environment of Aotearoa New Zealand. As our collective identities continue to shift, these artists search for their own sense of solid ground—or safety, identity and belonging— in the physical and psychological places they occupy.
Since the mid-twentieth century, New Zealanders have looked to define ourselves outside of our connections with Britain. One of the ways artists have contributed to this is through their reflections on the land that sustains us here in Te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa (the Pacific). Solid Ground also recognises the 100th anniversary of Colin McCahon’s birth. Acknowledging the artist’s profound investigations into identity through abstract landscape painting, this exhibition includes his significant work Through the Wall of Death: A Banner (1972), placing it within a wider context of New Zealand contemporary art practice now.
Other artists in Solid Ground include Ann Shelton, Ann Verdcourt, Areta Wilkinson, Brent Wong, Doris Lusk, Jeffery Harris, John Bevan Ford, John Lake, Judy McIntosh Wilson, Ralph Hotere, Ronnie van Hout, Robert Ellis and Shane Cotton.