Different times

One of the great things you used to be able to do as the director of a small public art museum was, once in a while, put on your dream show. It had been eight years since the Colin McCahon survey show had toured New Zealand when in 1980 at the Dowse Art Gallery (as it was then) we gathered together some of his greatest large paintings and put them together in one room simply titled Colin McCahon at the Dowse Art Gallery.

The 16 panels of The Second Gate series were still in Peter McLeavey’s upstairs store waiting for a buyer. We wrapped each panel in a rug, carried it downstairs, and loaded it into the rental van we had hired for the day. We also borrowed Practical religion. This very large work was rolled up to transport and then - impossible to believe now - hung by two people, one up on a ladder and the other feeding the painting over her shoulder as it was progressively nailed to a batten attached to the wall.

At that time the main gallery of the Dowse was still clad in grey concrete blocks and paintings were hung on two parallel rails that snaked round all the walls. Billy Apple came to give a talk on his 1979 Alterations tour, but as an über white cube guy the grey blocks were too much. His judgment? “It’s like being inside a sheet of graph paper.” To try to get some distance from the graph-like walls we sometimes hung works floating in mid-air from nylon fishing line. The large Milan Mrkusich corner painting owned by Les and Milly Paris was hung that way and floated like some sort of spiritual portal to another world. You can see in the photograph that McCahon’s Landscape theme and variations (series B) was hung that way because the banners had already been stuck to board by the Arts Council (what McCahon dryly called “their more official treatment”). Our trapeze-like hang was probably the least of their worries! Thanks to the ever-generous Peter McLeavey, one of The five wounds of Christ paintings he had recently commissioned from McCahon was also included. Although it only took a few weeks to organise and install, the McCahon show was a great success based on two factors: a simple idea and extraordinary work.

Images: Both images were taken during the 1980 Dowse Art Gallery exhibition. Top, The Second Gate series. Bottom, in the foreground is Practical religion: the resurrection of Lazarus showing Mount Martha with Landscape theme and variations (series B) hanging in front of the back wall.