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Gow Langsford Gallery is thrilled to announce we are now representing Jacqueline Fahey.

Jaqueline Fahey''s paintings collide portraiture with suburban landscapes to create riotously colourful compositions that revel in the chaos of domesticity. Married and a mother to three early in her painting career, the stifling gendered society of 1950s and 1960s New Zealand saw Fahey adopt unconventional colour, technique, and subject matter to reflect and actively challenge the status quo of the gender divide. Yet embedded in the artist''s pugnacious approach is a great level of affection for the women and relationships portrayed, evident in the careful detail bestowed on traditionally ''female'' interests - clothing, interior textiles, bouquets - elevating the decorative female space above the austere settings more familiar to portraiture.

Her distinctive painting style is recognisable for a raucous use of colour, with often haphazard use of perspectival space to force the viewer into the claustrophobia of the female experience. You can hear Fahey''s paintings. Expertly realised portraits are candid in their expressions - characters are shown mouth open, mid argument, or gazing off absentmindedly into the distance. Glimpses of TV sets, record players, and radios are combined with closely observed wine glasses, cups of tea, and bottles of gin. The clamour of crockery and conversation rings through the paintings and spills out into our space as they do into the painted gardens visible through open windows. Later bodies of work see Fahey applying her distinctive flare to urban environments and urban characters; translating domestic politics to their manifestation in the public environment.

Born in Timaru in 1929, Fahey began her painting education in earnest at sixteen, at the Canterbury College School of Art, now Ilam. During this time she became friends with notable members of the Christchurch collective of exhibiting artists, The Group, Rita Angus and Doris Lusk. Of these friendships and the impact on her practice, she says, "It wasn''t so much that they influenced the way I painted. What they did was allow me to be professional, to think of it as my life."Not content only painting her feminism, Fahey has been instrumental in promoting female peers, organising the first actively ''gender-balanced'' exhibition with Rita Angus, which was staged at Centre Gallery, Wellington in 1964. Her contribution to feminist art is recognised here and internationally, and two of her paintings were featured in the major exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which toured to MoMA PS1 the following year.

In addition to painting, Fahey is a novelist, having published a novel and two volumes of memoirs. In 1997 she was named an Officer of New Zealand Merit (ONZM) for her services to art, and in 2013 she was granted an Arts Foundation Icon Award, the organisation''s highest honour and restricted to a circle of twenty living artists.

We will be holding a solo exhibition in April 2021; contact us for further details on available works.

Gow Langsford Gallery is pleased to announce an offsite exhibition event to launch a new Paul Dibble publication. Please join us this Saturday 10 October at 10am at The International, 9 Princes St, Auckland to celebrate the launch of Paul Dibble X: A Decade of Sculpture 2010 - 2020 and to view a new body of work.

Published by Bateman Books, Paul Dibble X: A Decade of Sculpture 2010 - 2020 features 180 pages of beautiful colour images and essays written by Fran Dibble. It is the third book written by the artist''s wife, who also works alongside Paul in a variety of roles. The book covers a fruitful decade of the artist''s career, not covered in previous publications.

The book launch will be an opportunity to meet the artist, and will be accompanied by a new body of work by Dibble, with monumental sculptures flanked by a series of smaller studies and maquettes, all cast in bronze by the artist at his Palmerston North foundry. These will provide a fitting setting to celebrate a rich period of the artist''s practice, renowned for his breath-taking sculptures which demonstrate his command of the metal.

Please RSVP to cass@glg.co.nz by Friday 9 October. Contact us for a list of available works.

Publication Details
RRP: $69.99
ISBN: 978-1-98-853841-9
Publishing date: October, 2020, Bateman Books
Format: 305 x 254mm, 180 pages, 5c x5c full colour - including gold foil, Paperback with flaps

Please join us on Tuesday 24 November from 5-7pm for the opening of Karl Maughan''s new exhibition at our Kitchener St Gallery. This suite of works are accented with sunflowers, harking back to the flora featured in the artist''s early period.

On this occasion, we are pleased to release the new limited edition screenprint Rata Road, which Maughan has worked on over the course of the year. Moreover this year, Gow Langsford Gallery has worked alongside Auckland University Press to publish a monograph on the artist. Launching alongside the exhibition, the book celebrates the artist''s contribution to New Zealand art. An excerpt from the introduction follows:

"There are no paintings of gardens in New Zealand quite as familiar as those of Karl Maughan. Since his first solo exhibition in Wellington in 1987, Maughan''s commitment to the garden as a framework for painting has been enduring. His practice is invitational, immersive, and obsessive. He is a constructor of worlds, compiling and piecing together imagery to create gardens that emanate a sense of possibility, mystery, and delight.

Gardens are not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Instead we might think of them as second nature: a Sisyphean engagement with the natural world resulting from human negotiations with plants and soil. Deeply rewarding, gardening requires effort, care and dedication, providing us with food and medicine as well as nourishment for our spiritual and aesthetic desires. As a species we have carved out botanical spaces for millennia, designing them in our image, according to our tastes. ''It''s universal'', Maughan muses, ''we''ve been fencing off the wild - forests, animals - forever, to have a space of our own, and not just to keep us safe.

For Maughan, the garden has developed into a visual language, grown over the course of his career and, like any language, borne from close observation. Maughan collects photographic records of green spaces, from his neighbours'' back garden to visits to established public gardens in New Zealand and England. Like a gardener, he takes cuttings of favoured plants from these photographs, transplanting them to form small collages which often form the basis for a painting. In doing so, he interferes with photography''s innate capability to record space as we see it.

There are clear parallels between making gardens and making art. Both are hands-on creative practices; they require physical labour to transform raw materials into spaces that frame the natural world. In doing so, they might both be considered cultural microcosms, reflecting social concerns and aesthetic values. Maughan''s compositions are differentiated from the landscape tradition; they are paintings of nature filtered through culture - cultivated.

In a conversation during the COVID-19 level 4 restrictions, Maughan told us about the importance of community for inspiration. Perhaps this is the reason for his unfaltering popularity. The garden is a ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives, providing a backdrop for the joyous moments while making the quotidian memorable. The garden provides us solace and calm in times of stress. Over the course of this trying year, and confined to the space of our homes, we have been discussing the heightened importance of our gardens as a space of reprieve. Once more, the similarities between art and gardens are clear. Both have the ability to provide respite and offer hope, to console and delight in equal measure."

Contact us for a list of available works, for further details on the new limited edition screenprint, or to purchase a copy of his new publication. Publications are now available for pre-order, and will be available in-store from the 10 December.

Artweek Auckland is on now until 18 October. Both of our galleries will be open for Late Night Art on Tuesday 13 October from 5-9pm with exhibitions by David McCracken, Lisa Roet and Darryn George. There are a number of events happening around the Auckland CBD throughout the evening, view the full list of events here.

Gow Langsford Gallery is pleased to be included in Stockroom at Sapphire alongside three other Auckland galleries; Masterworks Gallery, Melanie Roger Gallery and Whitespace Contemporary Art. Join us and the other galleries for drinks as part of Artweek Auckland on Friday 16 October from 6-8pm at The Sapphire Room, Ponsonby Central.

We will be showcasing a number of affordable works by artists such as Dale Frank, Paul Dibble, Karl Maughan, John Pule, Judy Millar, Virginia Leonard and more.

Public Hours:

Thursday 15 October: 11am - 6pm
Friday 16 October: 11am - 8pm
Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October: 11am - 5pm

Contact us for further details.

You are invited to attend the launch of Dick Frizzell''s new publication, Me, According to the History of Art, at our Kitchener St Gallery on Thursday 29 October from 6pm. Please RSVP to editorial@masseypress.ac.nz by Thursday 15 October. Drinks and refreshments will be served and Dick Frizzell will be available to sign copies.

Gow Langsford Gallery and Auckland University Press warmly invite you to attend the launch of Colin McCahon: Is This the Promised Land? Vol. 2 1960-1987 by Peter Simpson.

Tuesday 28 July 2020 from 5-7pm
Gow Langsford Gallery, Kitchener Street

To be launched by Dame Jenny Gibbs

The book will be available to purchase and to be signed by the author. The limited signed slipcase edition will also be available. For more details, see here.

Please RSVP to cass@glg.co.nz by Friday 24 July.

Please join us on Saturday 26 September for two artist talks by Gregor Kregar and Grace Wright. We will begin at 2pm at our Kitchener St Gallery with Gregor Kregar''s Divided We Fall; following this we will migrate to our Lorne St Gallery for Grace Wright to speak about her new body of works in Alpha Paradise.

With COVID-19 Level 2 restrictions still in place within Auckland, we ask that those who attend to please wear a mask (we can also provide you with one on entry), and observe social distancing as much as possible.

Please confirm your attendance to cass@glg.co.nz by 12pm Friday 25 September.

Join us on Tuesday 27 October for the opening of three solo exhibitions; Michael Hight Two Rivers at Lorne St, Graham Fletcher Night Journal at Kitchener St and Dick Frizzell Ceci N''est Pas 1921 at Wellesley Gallery, Kitchener St from 5-7pm.

Michael Hight''s latest exhibition Two Rivers makes particular reference to the Whanganui and Rangitikei Rivers, sites of personal significance to the artist''s whakapapa and upbringing. The exhibition brings together two distinct compositional approaches, which share common meditations on the Anthropocene''s manipulation of the natural landscape.

In Ruahine, beehives are scattered amongst a field of rusting agricultural machinery. Fence posts cordon off the surrounding farm while powerlines disappear into the distance. With innate skill, Hight''s realism evokes a sense of place and familiarity beyond the rural scene depicted. The work gives off a warm glow, co-inhabited by homes of lively bees and the traces of human liveliness.

Sitting in contrast to what have become known as Hight''s ''beehive paintings'', his ''black paintings'' act as thought cabinets of curiosities. This body of work brings together fragments of landscapes and collected objects that employ the sort of free association often encountered in a dreamscape. With glimpses into an autobiographical narrative, these paintings challenge the viewer to create and question connections between time, object and place.

Contact us for available works.

The Night Journal paintings develop upon Graham Fletcher''s long-standing investigation of material cultures and intercultural spaces. As an extension to these ideas Fletcher has reintroduced pattern and decoration in response to a recent BBC documentary on Paul Gauguin''s life and artistic output entitled, Gauguin: A Dangerous Life (2019). This documentary featured the highly decorative works from Fletcher''s Virgin series (2001) alongside works of other artists such as Kehinde Wiley in its investigation of artistic responses to the works of Gauguin. Through the genre of still life painting, Fletcher has examined pictorial motifs that have come to represent Polynesia, including images of lush tropical vegetation and flowers as well as other patterns of consumption and domestic taste such as wallpaper placed alongside tribal objects and artefacts. This year Fletcher was awarded the Tylee Cottage Residency and Lilian Ida Smith Award which he will undertake in 2021 in Whanganui.

Contact us for a list of available works.

"This has been a huge year for me: with the publication of my book Me, According to the History of Art. As you''ve probably heard by now, I set out to get around international copyright law by personally illustrating all the paintings I reference in the text. Legally this mad gambit wasn''t entirely successful but it did reconnect me with my own golden age of Modernism: early 20^th century cubism, with emphasis on the Synthetic period, which generated an outcome further down the track which still confounds me.

During the final stages of the book''s production I was lucky enough to visit the Reina Sofia Gallery in Madrid where I saw and photographed a fantastic collection of Juan Gris paintings that I had never seen before. The effect on me of being in a room full of these gorgeous paintings, all in their perfect museum frames, was overwhelming and the idea started to grow then that I could conceivably recreate a similar sensation back home in Auckland. A bit like being moved by any moment in the ''real'' world that inspires you to somehow codify it into a portable experience back in your studio/workshop.

I continued with the A4 sized illustrations of all my Gris'', Picasso''s, Warhol''s etc. when I got back home but gradually started to test the limits of the concept by reproducing a couple of the key works (Picasso, McCahon) to scale, on canvas, with all the underpainting, corrections and textures inherent in the original work (for some godforsaken reason I''m quite good at this stuff). Then I did a few more... which naturally segued into the original fantasy: reproducing the hugely romantic and nostalgic rush I experienced back in the Reina Sofia. Lots of serendipity there... story of my life."

- Excerpt from Dick Frizzell''s artist statement

Contact us for further details on the works available.

Please join us on Tuesday 29 September from 5-7pm for the opening of three solo exhibitions; David McCracken Exalt in Transmission at Lorne St, Darryn George A River Flowing out of Eden at Kitchener St and Lisa Roet Brother''s Keeper at Wellesley Gallery, Kitchener St.

David McCracken returns to working in corten steel in Exalt in Transmission. McCracken notes; "these works are derived from my experiences as a young working man in marginal rural New Zealand and in other, usually male-dominated working environments. I noticed how working men found and expressed respect for their fellow man through appreciation of their craft and skill, as represented by the objects and edifices of the made environment. As a maker, this remains essential to me; that the quality of your work can be a symbol of respect for your fellow man.

The flexible belts that these are loosely based on are archetypal mechanical disruptors. As engineers managed to reconcile the conflicting demands of flexibility, precision and durability, they dislodged a raft of technologies. They are themselves increasingly dislodged as emergent technologies arise, and it was as discarded components that I discovered them, immediately drawn to the italicized, cursive beauty of the forms, albeit an elegance they could not achieve when pressed into their intended purpose.

There is also the beginning of an enquiry into the beauty and complexity of machined mechanical gears. The physics of mechanical gears have a rigorous mathematical precision to them so that the surfaces of meshing teeth never lose contact with each other when they''re under load. It is something I have come to see as a metaphor for communication, the need being to maintain contact." - Artist Statement, September 2020

Contact us?for a list of available works.

"And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted" (Genesis, 2:10)

Taking its title from the Book of Genesis, Darryn George''s A River Flowing out of Eden marks a notable shift in the artist''s career. Where previous abstract works utilised a limited palette of blue, red, black and white, brought together in minimalist compositions, George''s latest paintings are playfully polychromatic and combine abstracted shapes with foliage and flowers to create dreamlike gardens of delight.

The birth of this body of work was in the aftermath of New Zealand''s first terrorist attack: the Christchurch mosque shootings of 2019. Christchurch based, the artist witnessed diverse crowds gathering at the Botanic Gardens, coming together to join those affected in solidarity. This outpouring of love and support inspired the marked shift in George''s practice, and led him to formalise a new visual vocabulary he had been experimenting with since 2018.

The resulting paintings are deliberately naive, both in technique and palette, using oil pastels to combine illustrative depictions of gardens with cheerfully saturated colour. They are direct and joyful. They ask their viewers to revel in their exuberant innocence, but they are also grounded in a quiet and restrained composition. The vertical structure we recognise from previous bodies of work becomes both a pillar of strength, and the river flowing from Eden to nourish the crowds below.

Contact us for a list of available works.

Thomas Huxley''s nineteenth century view that "nature is nasty and indifferent, and mortality is the sword forged by man to slay the dragon of its animal past" has evolved into that of an age of empathy in the twenty-first century. An artist''s role is to tease the imagination, and hint at possibilities, while science demonstrates through repeated observations and solid data. Through Lisa Roet''s own limited research into animal behaviour, she has attempted to follow the path of the scientist through the eye of the artist and produce a series of moments of observation to support the idea that we are living in "the age of empathy".

Working in both marble and bronze, Roet has captured these moments such as the apes hand; outreaching and searching mirroring our own, operating as a tool for communication, to convey compassion and aggression. The hand holds information through its palm lines and through its fingertips about genetics and biological connections while outstretched it can be seen as a symbol of unity and social cohesion. This body of work is developed from references to Roet''s research into animal behaviour, from the Snow Macaques found in the hot springs in Japan, the Golden Monkeys of Yunnan, to the research by Dr Jane Goodall concerning inter-animal communication and in particular, her research of the Chimpanzee named David Greybeard. Through David Greybeard, Dr Goodall had her first communication with Chimpanzees in what was to become her seminal research into Chimpanzee behaviour and in turn a reflection of human behaviour.

Contact us for a list of available works.

Earlier this year, on the edge of uncertainty at the beginning of our nationwide lockdown, we wrote to our database of collectors "In art, we find different ways of looking at the world around us. It gives us inspiration and for centuries artists have offered hope of a future beyond their current circumstances. Artists can articulate and express what words do not. Today it is the same. Even in these most surreal times, history tells us that art endures.''''

And endured it has. We are deeply proud of our artists and staff for the exhibitions presented and events we have achieved this year and are extremely thankful for the support of our collectors. This year has undoubtedly been a demanding one and we feel, more than ever, a responsibility to foster the future of New Zealand art.

In February this year we mounted our first New Graduate exhibition, with the vision that this would become an annual event. Unfortunately, with the disruption of 2020 and the impact this has had on graduating exhibitions we are unable to host the 2021 exhibition.

Instead we are thrilled to announce a Gow Langsford Graduate prize. $5,000 will be awarded to an outstanding recent Visual Arts graduate who has demonstrated excellence and resilience in their field.

In recent years we have focused our charitable efforts on community based organisations and have amongst others raised money for The Auckland City Mission, Mapura Studios and World Vision; this year it seems pertinent to support what is at the core of our business and recognise emerging talent. An outline of the award can be seen below and the full details will be announced in the New Year.

We would like to thank all of our supporters for your continued support of the Gallery and our artists this year. We are closing at midday on Christmas Eve and reopening on 11 January.

We wish you all safe, healthy and happy holidays and look forward to seeing you in 2021.

Ngā mihi o te tau hou.

Award details:

The recipient will be awarded a prize of $5,000.

Artists must have finished an undergraduate or higher qualification in 2019 or 2020 and be nominated by a lecturer or curator from a recognized institution. Each institution may nominate a maximum of 5 candidates.

Entries open on 1 February and close on 1 March 2021. Application details and nomination process and judges will be added to our website when the applications open.