This exhibition is a partnership between The Ashburton Art Gallery and The Physics Room, Christchurch. In March, collection items from the Ashburton Art Gallery collection were exhibited alongside work created by Eve Armstrong, John Vea, and Mike Hewson in (Un)conditional I at The Physics Room in Christchurch. Now, in August, Armstrong, Vea, and Hewson have made new work responding to the (Un)conditional series of exhibitions, which explores the concepts of hosting, being a guest, trade, exchange, reciprocity, utu, and manaakitanga, as well as Ashburton as a particular site.

Earlier this year, Vea travelled to Ashburton to conduct research and talanoa with migrants and newcomers to the area to understand how locals welcomed these groups. A number of factors meant that Vea was unable to reach these communities and as a result the majority of his experiences were with migrant business owners in the town area. Working outwards from the challenges he faced in locating and contacting these communities, Vea has created a suite of rendered property development drawings to propose an international food court for the now vacant iSite building to suggest an environment where a host of social interactions can occur.
This will be the third and final iteration of Armstrong’s Trading Table as part of the (Un)conditional series of exhibitions in 2018. The table now carries trades from The Physics Room in Christchurch (7-9 March) and The Suter Gallery in Nelson (17 & 18 March). These remainders embody the previous interactions and multiple currencies including ideas, information, skills, services, and items. Occurring over two days in Ashburton (4 & 5 August), Armstrong will host the table and solicit exchanges from participants under the tagline “almost everything accepted”.
Hewson has been developing his line of hand-painted tiles—the eponymous Hewsonclad—since the beginning of 2018. Designed to be distributed at a price point available to the everyday consumer rather than a small group of art collecting elite, (Un)conditional IV showcases three Ashburton palettes—bush, tussock, and alpine—borrowed from a trio of A.A Deans paintings. Endlessly modular, the exhibition provides an opportunity for audiences to imagine Hewsonclad in their homes via a variety of hanging arrangements. It is hoped that eventually Hewsonclad will find a distributor amongst New Zealand’s larger hardware and designware chains to fully circumvent the gallery system.

Exhibition runs: 6 – 31 August, 2018

Header image: Mike Hewson, Hewsonclad (Ashburton Tile Paintings: A.A Deans Alpine, A.A Deans Mt Peel Bush, and A.A Harper Tussock), enamel on board, various dimensions, 2018.

Image: John Vea, If you build it, they will come (detail), series of digital prints on corflute, 900mm x 600mm, 2018.