Likeness & Character: Portraits From the Auckland Art Gallery Collection

Sun 7 Oct 2007 — Sun 20 Apr 2008

Exhibition Details

One of the highlights of the exhibition is the first display of Tony Fomison's The Ponsonby Madonna.

Most people have photographs of family and friends at home but they may not call them 'portraits'. That term's meanings have expanded since it conveyed sitting quietly on many occasions before an oil painter. Portraits give us visual information about people, what they look like and who they are. They do not need to flatter but they do need to express that someone is observed carefully.

Michael Illingworth's Man and woman figures with still life and flowers of 1971 updates the story of Adam and Eve and places them in a stylish local interior. Humorous imaginative portraits were a speciality of Illingworth and he was a key figure painter for New Zealand of the 1970s.

Tony Fomison's From a photo of Patara Te Tuhi shows the influence that photography has had on portrait painting. The Māori kaumatua is an updated homage to the Goldie and Lindauer portrait tradition. Yvonne Todd's Limpet is a fantastical contemporary portrait where clothes, makeup and adornment become as much a part of the portrait as the figure herself.

Edith Amituanai's Miss Amituanai has already become a classic image of urban Pacific life in its celebration of the family. The interior is not an irrelevant background to the portrait but inseparable from the portrait's meaning. Ben Cauchi's 2005 Self-portrait skilfully honours a traditional photographic technique but updates it into the present.

Date: Sun 7 Oct 2007 — Sun 20 Apr 2008
Curated by: Ron Brownson
Location: New Gallery
Cost: Free entry

Related Artworks

At Grotto Road, Onehunga, 10 May 1980

Mark Adams

Production date

1995

Medium

gelatin silver print, toned with gold

Size (h x w)

360 x 460 mm

Credit line

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Mark Adams and the Partners of Ernst & Young, 1995

Accession no

1994/25/12

Production date: 1862
Medium: oil on canvas
Size (h x w): 996 x 738 x 50 mm
Credit line: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Sir George Grey, 1887
Accession no: 1887/1/41

Hami Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs)

William Ewart

The Ponsonby Madonna

Tony Fomison

Production date: 1982-1983
Medium: oil and alkyd on hessian
Size (h x w): 2400 x 3600 mm
Credit line: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased with funds from the Lyndsay Garland Trust, 2006
Accession no: 2006/19.1-3

Production date: circa 1943-circa 1945
Medium: kauri
Size (h x w): 310 x 180 x 155 mm
Credit line: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1995
Accession no: 1994/37/3

Production date: 2005
Medium: ambrotype
Size (h x w): 350 x 270 mm
Credit line: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2006
Accession no: 2006/21/1

Production date: 1939
Medium: oil on canvas
Size (h x w): 460 x 409 mm
Credit line: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the artist in memory of his mother, 1939
Accession no: 1939/13/2