Matthew McIntyre-Wilson, Whatu Atu Whatu Mai Photo: supplied
As a curator at the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua since 2007, Greg Donson has been there for artists over a period of significant change for the gallery and the city.
Now Senior Curator, he has spearheaded the redeveloped gallery’s opening series of exhibitions, curating new artists' projects and dynamic displays of works from the gallery’s rich collection, speaking to both the gallery and Whanganui’s history.
Opening season Nō Konei From Here (on until 11 May) features more than 200 artworks, spanning four centuries of European and Aotearoa New Zealand art history. Working across the gallery spaces, old and new, the work also stretches from traditional gilt-framed paintings (the celebrated enormous painting 1886 ‘Flight from Egypt’ by British artist Frederick Goodall) and sculpture (the provocative Italian 1914 copy of a third century Greek original, ‘The Wrestlers’) to a huge variety of contemporary New Zealand artists. The contemporary collection here started in earnest, in the 1970s, leading many other collection institutions.
Frederick Goodall, The Flight into Egypt, 1884, oil on canvas Photo: Collection of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery
Many of the contemporary pieces are works created by artists that have been part of the gallery’s Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence programme, established in 1986. These works were made in response to Whanganui. Donson has worked himself with close to 50 of the artists who’ve undertaken this residency himself.
Greg Donson, Senior curator Sarjeant Te Whare o Rehua Photo: supplied
Also featured are solo artist projects by Matthew McIntyre-Wilson (Taranaki, Ngā Māhanga and Titahi), Tia Ranginui (Ngāti Hine Oneone) and Alexis Neal (Ngāti Awa and Te Ātiawa).
McIntyre-Wilson’s work occupies the old gallery’s celebrated dome, with woven hīnaki (eel nets) inspired by recovering an important traditional practice in partnership with artists up and down Whanganui river, over many years.
There is also a major new survey of the late celebrated Whanganui painter Edith Collier’s work (on show until 16 February 2025), curated by Jill Trevelyan, Donson and curator of collections Jennifer Taylor.
Collier is gaining increasing recognition as an outstanding early modernist, and the curators are co-authors of an accompanying Massey University Press book.
Greg Donson joins Mark Amery and Perlina Lau on Culture 101 live in Whanganui to toast the gallery and city’s future.
