Embracing the Contemporary: A review of the Dowse

A week ago I had the pleasure of meeting Senior Curator, Chelsea Nichols, of the Dowse Art Gallery and then taking a tour of New Zealand’s leading contemporary art gallery. Knowing something about the Dowse’s history is helpful framing for any visit. The gallery opened in 1971 and from the very beginning it pushed boundaries with its exhibitions and acquisitions. The Dowse started with a commitment to represent the under-represented and to champion underappreciated works and artists that the mainstream art world overlooked. As such the Dowse has a significant craft collection which includes carvings, weavings, ceramics, glass and jewellery. Craft has been a key part of the acquisition strategy over the past fifty years, alongisde more conventional pieces of 'art'. As Chelsea summarised, ‘The Dowse is a mix of quirk, craft and art’.

One of first controversies at the Dowse was the purchase and display of David Armitage’s 1972 painting entitled: She said, “Look at me”. I looked. She rose into detail forever. It shows a nude couple making love in a striking room of yellow and purple. Having read about it online, I was delighted to see the painting in the upper floor exhibition curated in collaboration with local fashion designer Jimmy D. (The name of this exhibition The House of Dowse x Jimmy D is a stroke of genius). This is a semi-permanent display of Dowse collection items, as opposed to the gallery's typical focus on short-term exhibitions with loaned and commissioned items.

Other standout pieces in the The House of Dowse included Victoria McIntosh’s 2019 work My Handbag, My Choice. The handbag is made from vintage undergarments and has beaded female reproductive organs sewn on. Vintage knitting needles inside the bag represent home-made tools for back-street abortions. McIntosh was inspired to make this piece after visiting the Police Museum in Porirua and seeing the handmade abortion tools. I found myself daydreaming about curating a show centred on this artwork. Having driven past two anti-abortion ‘I can’t wait for my birthday’ billboards in rural New Zealand, plus the US’s dispiriting insistence on rolling back Roe v Wade, it’s a very contemporary and controversial issue once more (if it ever stopped being).

Downstairs, with a soft bell still dinging in my ears from Korean artist Hanna Shim’s quirky installation Pillow Garden, I rounded the corner into a large white room with three dark metal sheds and several wall hangings. Yhonnie Scarce is an indigenous contemporary Australian artist and her Night Blindness exhibition explores the British nuclear testing between 1953 and 1963 on First Nation territory. This exhibition ‘makes visible the legacies of Australia’s history for First Nation peoples… the ongoing effects of radiation, loss of language and dispossession of land’.

The bulk of the room is taken up by Missile Park which is both an immersive experience and a ‘sombre memorial’. The room guide explains what the installation is about, opens the door and allows you to stand inside the central shed for a few minutes (you have to call out when you’re ready to leave). Alone, in almost total darkness and silence I stood contemplating the nuclear explosions: what must it have been like to experience the testing and to live now with the consequences. The silence and my inability to open or close the door (that’s done by the guide), gives just the smallest sense of what a ‘loss of language and dispossession of land’ might look and feel like. There are glass bush plums inside the shed that act as silent companions. You know they are there but you can’t see them.

Outside as my eyes adjusted I walked around to the ajar door of the first shed to see the glass sculptures in greater detail. The bush plums represent people, ‘as well as being metaphorical time bombs waiting to blow’ with Scarce stating that ‘every single bush plum is a loving memorial… fragile, resistant and ever-present.’ Chelsea also told me that the bush plums could represent the womb, a nod to the birth defects still experienced by the community. Peeling skin, another effect of radiation poison, is conveyed by the textured bitumen paint on the corrugated metal sheds. It was a powerful installation and memorial.

Another installation that I especially enjoyed was the Whenua Whatu: Maori ceramics from the The Dowse Collection. In a space that’s no more than an enlarged corridor was a small exhibition of nine ceramic pieces. Each work placed boldly on its own shelf with a spotlight surrounding it, creating a wall of nine beautifully illuminated pieces. Glass cases of ceramics are some of the easiest displays to walk straight past in museums but this open wall captures your attention the minute you round the corner. I found myself studying each piece carefully. I loved looking at and learning about Wi Taepa’s voluptuous clay vase; its unique colouring being a feature of Taepa’s ‘unglazed’ and ‘low tech’ methods. Tracy Keith’s Taniwha (guardian/protector) sculpture was also very striking.

Walking through the Dowse reminded me of the importance of taking curatorial risks. These installations challenge their audiences - they ask us to put aside scepticism, to listen as well as look and to take part. I’ve never before walked through a room of pillow cushions exploring ‘cuteness’ and then straight into a nuclear memorial - the Dowse does things differently. As a historian, contemporary art can often leave me cold but I really enjoyed being among such current works that are asking important questions. I left feeling connected and inspired, with exhibition ideas forming slowly in my mind. To feel creatively unblocked is the best gift I could have asked for from an hour or two in this charming, quirky and well-curated gallery.