Our People - Our Land

**Bruce Hunt**
Hills, and Dam, Lake Under Clouds

Our People - Our Land

This is the third exhibition in the series showcasing the New Zealand landscape and the people who inhabit it. Some 85 million years ago this country broke away from the Gondwana supercontinent, and the primeval forces it was subjected to are apparent in the rugged Central Otago landforms in Bruce Hunt’s Geomorphology, Mt Kyeburn. Through the relentless effects of erosion and human activity, the land has since been worn smooth, as in Brent Wong’s Hills & Dam, Lake Under Clouds.

Jim Wheeler’s bronze, Pohutukawa – Matariki, acknowledges both the Maori New Year and the coastal evergreen whose crimson blooms qualify it as New Zealand’s native Christmas tree. Prior to humans, this was a land of birds, and Nigel Brown makes a plea for the conservation of the Kokako. Aroha Gossage records the ghostly remnants, at Pakiri in eastern Northland, of the vast cabbage tree and kahikatea swamps that once characterised lowland New Zealand. Extensive bushland has made way for paddocks; Ray Ching portrays our once ubiquitous sheep, whose population peaked at just over 70 million in 1982, and Peter McIntyre’s Blue Cliffs is a tribute to the iconic rural woolshed. The land is still in transition, as witnessed by the spread of human settlement in Zarahn Southon’s Eden, in West Auckland.

Nuie-born artist John Pule addresses Pacific history and mythologies, and the impact of colonisation. And outside the gallery stands the sculpture Fa’afafine, by Fatu Feu’u, which acknowledges those people in his native Samoa who identify as belonging to a third gender.

**Ann Robinson**
Watcher: Treasures of the Earth

Recreation is the theme of the aptly-named Fun & Games by the late Christchurch artist Llew Summers, known for his monumental sculptures of the human form. More serious, not least from the birds’ point of view, is Ken Kendall’s bronze, 1 st of May, marking the start of the duck-shooting season. Moving from representation to gestural is Max Gimblett’s quatrefoil, Mustard Seed, while Ann Robinson’s 2016 crystal glass bowl, Watcher: Treasures of the Earth, with its coloured discs referring to nine elements from the earth – among them uranium, chromium and copper - brings a sense of serenity and timelessness to this collection.

**Bruce Hunt**
Geomorphology, Mt Kyeburn

280 Parnell Road Auckland New Zealand T: +64 9 308 9125 E: jg@jgg.co.nz

Our People - Our Land

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Our People - Our Land