Background Matters: Portraiture and Place in Aotearoa New Zealand
For Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House, June 2025
Link to the exhibition here.
A curious invitation brews on the serene grounds of Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House: “A picture is a whole world unto itself. Step beyond the frame and see what you find.”
Background Matters: Portraiture and Place in Aotearoa New Zealand, curated by Maddie Brooks Gillespie (Liz Stringer Curatorial Intern 2024), is a collaborative partnership between New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga to bring the much-anticipated collection to Ōtautahi Christchurch.
The historic site, in its continued dedication to women’s suffrage and Kate Sheppard's legacy, frames this touring exhibition of predominantly female portraits in fresh dialogues. A diverse selection of works from emerging, mid-career, and established artists are staged confidently between the domesticities – curtains, cabinets, and potted plants – that dwell alongside. The clock, a working mechanism retrieved from the Lyttelton Timeball, ticks ominously to fill the room.
A step into Tanu Gago’s photograph Vicky, Genevieve unleashes the assertive gazes of two women sitting on the floor of a suburban kitchen, overfilled with tropical fruits and vegetables as a satirical response to the stereotypes of Pasifika womanhood. Robyn Kahukiwa’s Wakahuia depicts a young family with artefacts of their Māoritanga, painted in oil during the early stages of the Māori renaissance. Carmen - an expansive portrait of Carmen Rupe - is painted by Nicolette Page to portray the activist, entertainer, and icon of the transgender community, surrounded by the beloved objects in her home.
These portraits lend the spotlight to their expanded backgrounds, and prompt us to examine the converged relations between the sitter, the setting, and the artist’s vision. Entering the space ‘beyond’ encompasses not only the extensive discourse of belonging – such as the wider Pasifika, Māori, transgender, and diasporic experiences of Aotearoa – but also the fundamental questioning on the importance of place in the viewer’s own identity.
Roaming through the blurred nuances between history, memory, and lived experience can leave one caught in the layered flurry of rich histories to digest in the spaces, but the conscientious curation leaves just enough intimacy to feel like you are simply sitting in the quiet with them. Background Matters is a striking window into what portraiture can and has looked like in Aotearoa – a photograph of an ancestral landscape (Chevron Hassett’s Billy, Cyhlus and Pikopiko), or a one-shot video scene that resembles a postcard (Christopher Ulutupu’s Salt Baths, New Kid in Town II).
Background Matters: Portraiture and Place in Aotearoa New Zealand
Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House
12 April - 27 July 2025