Which New Zealand artist painted herself as a smoking modern woman in 1937?
Rita Angus.
Who joined her on a painting trip to remote Cass the previous year?
Louise Henderson.
In 1941, who wrote the manifesto ‘Individual Happiness Now’ with British writer Robert Graves?
Len Lye.
In 1947, who wrote ‘New Zealand’s Oldest Art Galleries’ and what were they?
Theo Schoon in the Listener. Māori rock-art sites.
What is New Zealand’s oldest (conventional) public art gallery?
Dunedin Public Art Gallery, founded by William Matthew Hodgkins in 1884.
In 1948, who said McCahon’s work ‘might pass as graffiti on the walls of some celestial lavatory’?
A.R.D. Fairburn.
When did McCahon move to Auckland to work at Auckland City Art Gallery?
1953.
Who was Director of the Gallery back then?
Eric Westbrook.
When did Bill Culbert leave New Zealand?
1957.
Who was born Barrie Bates?
Billy Apple.
When did he go blond?
1962, using Lady Clairol Instant Crème Whip.
When did Peter McLeavey open his Wellington gallery?
In 1966, in his flat on the Terrace.
Who curated New Zealand Māori Culture and the Contemporary Scene in 1966?
Buck Nin for Canterbury Museum.
Who said: ‘My work is an investigation of positive/negative relationships within a deliberately limited range of forms.’
Gordon Walters.
Where and when did he first show his koru paintings?
At Auckland dealer gallery New Vision, also in 1966.
Who was Otago University’s first Hodgkins Fellow?
Michael Illingworth, again in 1966.
When was Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith’s book New Zealand Painting: An Introduction first published?
1969.
Of whose work was it said: ‘When you offer only three vertical lines precisely drawn and set into a dark pool of lacquer it is a visual kind of starvation’.
Ralph Hotere.
Who wrote that?
Hone Tuwhare in his poem ‘Hotere’.
What was the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s opening show?
Leon Narbey’s Real Time in 1970.
Who was its Director?
John Maynard.
When was Ngā Puna Waihanga formed?
1973.
What was it?
A Māori artists and writers association.
When was the first issue of Art New Zealand published?
1976.
Whose work was on the cover?
Raymond McIntyre.
Who painted Drinking Couple: Fraser Analysing My Words? And who was Fraser?
Jacqueline Fahey in 1977. Her husband, psychiatrist Fraser McDonald.
Where did Jeffrey Harris go to art school?
He didn’t. He was self taught.
When did Richard Killeen make his first cutout?
1978.
Who was crucified in Christchurch the same year?
Andrew Drummond at the CSA Gallery.
When did Wellington City Art Gallery open and who was the Director?
1980, in Victoria Street. Seddon Bennington.
What was his last job?
Director of Te Papa, until 2009, when he died of hypothermia while tramping in the Tararua Range aged 61.
What was ANZART?
A trans-Tasman experimental-art exchange event. There were three: Christchurch in 1981, Hobart in 1983, and Auckland in 1985.
Has Marina Abramovic ever performed publicly in New Zealand?
Yes, with Ulay at ANZART in Christchurch.
When did Wellington’s Women’s Gallery open?
1982.
That year, to where did Robin White and her family relocate?
The Republic of Kiribati.
What’s White’s religion?
She’s Baháʼí.
And what’s her tribal affiliation?
Ngāti Awa.
Auckland art dealer Gary Langsford played guitar in which famous New Zealand band?
DD Smash.
When and where did Te Māori open?
In 1984 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
At Art in Dunedin in 1984, who composed music from his own dripping urine?
John Cousins, with Membrane.
Who made Gates of the Goddess: A Southern Crossing Attended by the Goddess and when?
Vivian Lynn in 1986.
What was it made of?
Recycled tapa cloth.
Cass Altarpiece has been described as ‘expressionism with nothing to express’. Who painted it?
Julian Dashper in 1986.
What Christchurch artist based much of her work on alchemy and kabbalah?
Julia Morison.
Who depicted herself as a rat and a tiger?
Marie Shannon, in The Rat in the Lounge (1985) and A Tiger in Bed (1987).
When did Auckland’s Artspace open?
1987.
How many buildings has it occupied?
Three. Federal Street, then Quay Street, then K Road. For a while, it also ran the George Fraser Gallery as an annex.
What New Zealand artist featured in the show Magiciennes de la Terre in Paris in 1989.
Neil Dawson with Globe.
What do Marlene Cubewell and Merit Gröting have in common?
They are pseudonyms for the artist now known as Et Al.
Which Lyttelton artist had a game-changing experience in the subantarctic?
Bill Hammond visiting the Auckland Islands in 1989, where bird still rule the roost.
What did The Active Eye, Views/Exposures, and Imposing Narratives have in common?
They were all survey shows of New Zealand photography, from 1975, 1982, and 1989 respectively.
In Views/Exposures, who presented five identical images of his own naked torso?
Peter Peryer.
Who dressed-up her Uncle Hugh (then suffering from dementia) to restage a series of iconic historical photos?
Margaret Dawson, in The Men from Uncle, published as a book in 1989.
Which artist died at Waitangi aged 50, the day after the 1990 Waitangi Day celebrations?
Tony Fomison.
Who did his pe’a?
Samoan master tattooist Sua Sulu’ape Paulo II.
Who photographed him getting it?
Mark Adams.
With him, which two other painters comprised the Militant Artists Union?
Philip Clairmont and Allen Maddox.
How old were both Clairmont and Giovanni Intra when they died?
34. Claimont died in 1984, Intra in 2002.
In 1992, who based the design of his exhibition catalogue cover after the one for the Nazis’ 1937 Degenerate Art show?
Dick Frizzell, Tiki, at Gow Langsford Gallery.
In 1994, Hamilton city councillor Russ Rimmington was reported in the media saying: ‘I’ve got a mind as broad as a Roman sewer, but this is just sleaze.’ What was he describing?
Christine Webster’s show Black Carnival at Waikato Museum of Art and History.
In 1997, who ‘stole’ McCahon’s Urewera Triptych and why?
Te Kaha and Laurie Davis, to draw attention to Tahoe land claims.
How did they hide it?
They buried it.
Where did they steal it from?
Aniwaniwa Visitor Centre in Urewera National Park.
Who designed that building?
John Scott.
What photobook was described as ‘a charismatic exposé of the hideous truths and self-conscious mythologies of unemployed psychopaths who frequent Verona cafe and actually believe in drag’.
Ann Shelton Redeye (1997).
Who said it?
One of its subjects, Giovanni Intra.
When did New Zealand start going to the Venice Biennale?
2001.
Who did we send?
Peter Robinson and Jacqueline Fraser, both Ngāi Tahu.
What was the Bart Wells Institute?
An artist-run gallery in London run by expatriate Francis Upritchard and friends from 2001 to 2003.
Yvonne Todd won the inaugural Walters Prize in 2002. Who was the judge and what was the name of her winning photographic series?
Harald Szeemann. Asthma and Eczema.
Who was in the hot seat longest: Paula Savage as Director of City Gallery Wellington or Chris Saines as Director of Auckland Art Gallery?
Savage. She was Director from 1990 to 2012—twenty-two years. Saines was Director from 1996 to 2013—a mere seventeen.
When did Bill Culbert represent New Zealand in the Venice Biennale?
In 2013, fifty-six years after leaving the country.
In recent years, Christchurch Art Gallery acquired five ‘significant’ works by Martin Creed, Antony Gormley, Ron Mueck, Michael Parekōwhai, and Bridget Riley. Why five?
That was the number of years the Gallery was closed following the earthquake.
Who won the Walters Prize in 2016 for a video where he spoke to animals?
Shannon Te Ao, for Two Shoots that Stretch Far Out (2013–4).
Who has been the Herald’s art critic for over fifty years and is known for wearing a cape?
T.J. McNamara.
What group protested Luke Willis Thompson’s inclusion in the 2018 Turner Prize?
BBZ (Bold Brazen Zamis or Babes)—‘a curatorial collective from SE london, prioritising the experiences of Queer womxn, trans and nb poc’.