Wayne Youle’s bold, compelling portraits of New Zealand art-world personalities include musicians, poets, writers and visual artists including Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, Margaret Mahy and Len Lye. The vibrant, multi-coloured portraits with their abstract shapes and monochrome backgrounds are deceptively simple – yet remarkably alive.

Like many artists of his generation, Youle looks to Pop Art for inspiration with bright saturated colours, hard-edged style and appropriated imagery. He takes the portrait and reinvents it, demonstrating how portraiture can assert itself as a viable and relevant art form today.

Come take a ‘portrait tour of the arts’ through the paintings of New Zealand’s best known figures in the creative arts.

A multimedia exhibition showing portraits of creative women and their work.

Curators: Peter Derksen and Nicola Caldwell

Eye contact is often fleeting – we look away from our most familiar friends, share only passing glances with strangers on the street. But if you were to really gaze into someone’s eyes, how would this change your perception of them?

Direct and uncompromising, the portraits in Eye to Eye explore the dynamics of looking shared between artist and subject, subject and viewer. 

A Deane Gallery exhibition featuring works from the NZPG collection.

Curators: Nicola Caldwell & Peter Derksen

Covering over 300 years of cartoon portraiture, this exhibition presents original caricature art in a wide range of styles from traditional paintings and drawings to contemporary digital media, and shows how modern caricature has evolved from the print media into a predominantly digital art form.

Classic caricatures by world-famous New Zealand cartoonists including Sir David Low, Les Gibbard and Murray Ball are included, as well as tongue-in-cheek portraits of New Zealand celebrities by talented contemporary caricaturists like Sharon Murdoch and Chris Slane.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Oliver Stead, Curator of Drawings, Paintings and Prints at the Turnbull Library, and Hannah Benbow, the Turnbull’s Research Librarian, Cartoons. Ludicrous Likenesses also celebrates the 25th anniversary of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive at the Turnbull Library

A selection of artworks acquired by the New Zealand Portrait Gallery are on display in the Deane Gallery. From Shannon Novak's abstract portrait of Michael Smither to an intimate portrait by Trevor Moffitt of his wife's friend and carer. 

This is a small selection of the Portrait Gallery’s new portrait acquisitions from 2016. The Gallery acquires work through various means, primarily gifted or sponsored portraits. We are always looking to expand our collection of portraits. A gift of a portrait to the New Zealand Portrait Gallery helps to build a representative collection of portraits of people who have contributed to the development of our nation, or who embody our culture in some interesting or important respect.

A photograph captures a split second in time and records it for history. Whether colour or black and white, digital or film, it is a moment which can’t be repeated or replicated. Capture exhibits those precious one off moments. The photographs range from those of historic record, like the wedding photograph of Richard Kelly, who along with his new wife Julie, would have had to stand still for up to fifteen minutes to insure correct exposure of the glass plate, to the image of Davina Whitehouse who, photographer Neil Penman was given a very brief time frame to get just four shots of the aging actress.
Images of Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon and Irene Ferguson all capture the slight unease and uncomfortableness each artist has with being posed in front of the camera, Ferguson preferring to look away completely. These images are in stark contrast to Sister Loyola Galvin and writer Catherine Chidgey who appear relaxed and confident, enjoying the process of the portrait.
Peter and Olivia McLeavey, captures the father daughter team upstairs at his gallery at a period of change with Peter beginning to step back from managing the Peter McLeavey Gallery. Olivia’s hand is placed reassuringly on Peter’s arm, indicating her lasting support.
 

This exhibition was made possible with the support of the Deane Endowment Trust, which supports the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Collection