NEW ART GALLERY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28800, 22 January 1959, Page 7

NEW ART GALLERY

Opening Soon In City

Christchurch will have its first private art gallery on Monday. A large gymnasium in Cashel street has been converted into a spacious, well-lit gallery where the work of serious painters, sculptors, potters and craftsmen from all over New. Zealand will be shown in a continuous and changing exhibition. Mr A. Brooke, who has founded the gallery, believes that New Zealand’s artists need greater opportunity to display their work than the limited chances offered by art societies and other such bodies. He is interested also in the growing number of painters who do not exhibit their work because they do not wish to be associated with any organisation. The opening collection contains works by many who have not previously exhibited in Christchurch. Among the better-known painters exhibiting are Colin McCahon, M. T. Woolaston, W. J. Reed, Louise Henderson, Roy Cowan, Rudolf Gopas, Russell Clark, Doris Lusk and Olivia Spencer-Bower. Juliet Peters is showing pottery and lithographs and Mervyn Taylor wood engravings and lino-cuts The gallery will be open until about 11.... o’clock at night as

well as during the day, so that it -Wil t>e available to those who are unable to visit it during the normal business hours

Mr Brooke hopes that the gallery will not only give the public greater opportunities to see what is being produce in New Zealand but will also provide artists vyith Jih incentive. The gallery will be opened at a private view on Saturday evening by Miss Ngaio Marsh.