New Works For McDougall

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32166, 9 December 1969, Page 13

New Works For McDougall

The exhibition by five student painters, showing in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery until Saturday, is part of a new policy for the showing of a wide range of work by young painters, according to the gallery’s director (Mr B. D. Muir, right).

All the Students In the present exhibition are in their second or third years at the School of Art at Ham, and their work shows diversity in subject matter and materials.

“Although produced as student work, most, of the paintings on show indicate a high degree of seriousness and professionalism in both the approach and the finish,” Mr Muir said. “I hope that exhibitions such as this one will be a recurring thing at the gallery.” On show in the McDougall from Sunday will be about 16 prints by Australian and Japanese artists which have been added to the gallery’s permanent collection. They include work by several wellknown artists, including Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd.

Mr Muir bought the prints in Melbourne and Sydney recently when he was in Australia to study gallery management with Mr Eric Westbrook, director of the Victoria National Art Gallery and the Christchurch City Council’s adviser on the future of the McDougall Gallery.

Mr Muir said the gallery had a good collection of prints which was not well known, and future policy would be to add to this regularly to make it a feature of the gallery. He has already made tentative arrangements for at least one touring print show next year—the Australian

Print Council’s annual exhibition—although no dates can be set for this in the meantime because the Australian itinerary of the show has not yet been settled. Plans for next year, though not yet definite, also include several touring exhibitions of New Zealand works, and possibly several other overseas shows. The gallery at present is also showing -two more additions to its permanent collection^—a bronze by Professor Paul Beadle, director of the Elam School of Art, Auckland, and a painting by Ralph Hotere, this year’s Hodgkins fellow at Otago University, who had a highly successful show recently in Dunedin. In an exhibition of work done during his year in Dunedin, Mr Hotere showed nearly 70 paintings and sold more than 50—many of them on the opening night. The painting in the McDougall, and the Beadle bronze, were bought for the gallery last month in Christchurch at the Group Show in the C.S.A. gallery.