10 exhibitions to see in Canterbury in February

Canterbury Museum, SHIFT: Urban Art Takeover, Canterbury Museum, 11 Rolleston Ave

An extraordinary exhibition, SHIFT: Urban Art Takeover features the work of more than 60 urban artists (national and international) in 35 of the Canterbury Museum’s display and storage spaces over five floors of a near empty building, prior to its temporary closure for a major upgrade. And there is more. SHIFT is also an event that measures and celebrates the current pulse of urban art, reinventing and shape-shifting itself with an unstoppable momentum. Jan 28 – April 11.

Group Exhibition, It’s Not About You – Eastside Multicultural Show, Eastside Gallery, Linwood, 338 Worcester St.

Eastside Gallery opens in 2023 with an exhibition from 15 artists representing local neighbourhoods through various themes, touching upon family and the virtues of communities. Among the responses is Madhu Rees – Let Us See the Land, its colourful geometric patterns in the style of Madhubani painting, and its message in remembrance of recent floods in India. Jan 30 – Feb 25.

Anet Neutze, Changing Atmospheres, Stoddart Cottage Gallery, 2 Waipapa Ave, Diamond Harbour

As Ōtepoti Dunedin-based artist Anet Neutze worked on her paintings for the exhibition Changing Atmospheres, she posed the question, “is there a change in the climate?” The “atmosphere” she refers to is the global crisis of capitalism versus poverty. A botanical illustrator, Changing Atmospheres sees Neutze working with watercolours on non-absorbent plywood panels, transforming and creating their own changing atmosphere in unanticipated surfaces and images. Feb 3-26.

Iokapeta​ Magele-Suamasi, Katrina Iosia, and Linda Va’aelua, Faltala, Fibre Gallery

Faltala is a group exhibition that prioritises story-telling. Iokapeta Magele-Suamasi, Katrina Iosia, and Linda Va’aelua’s subjects are eloquently considered through their background as both artists and technologists, working across disciplines that include photography, performance, sculpture, painting and virtual reality. lokapeta Magele-Suamasi’s images of her pets, Vanya & Neo, are central to the experience of Faltala, contrasting the real and virtual in a multidisciplinary exhibition as informative as it is surprising. Until Feb 21.

James Oram: By Spectral Hands, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, corner Worcester Blvd and Montreal St

By Spectral Hands is an installation that addresses and deals to 100 years of consumer capitalism. Make the time to walk around Oram’s geometric wire sculpture, and it changes from an orderly structure defined by its geometry, seemingly dissolving its form and space into an ambiguous unreality and the perfect metaphor for the promises and deceptions of global consumerism. Until Feb 19.

Fiona van Oyen, Anatomical Garden, The Central Art Gallery, The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, 2 Worcester Blvd

Fiona van Oyen’s Anatomical Garden makes the connection between our separation from – and intimate connections to – the natural world. It is an association of relationships that informs the titles of Van Oyen’s prints, and they include My father was a builder, its attention to the details of plant forms, equally bringing to mind our shared brevity and experience of the preciousness of life. Feb 2 – March 5.

Andrew Bond, The Golden Bough, and Barbara Boekelman, Non-Fiction continued, PGgallery192, 192 Fitzgerald Ave

Andrew Bond and Barbara Boekelman’s paintings share a commitment to the relationships between painting processes and their subjects, one inevitably informing the other. Bond’s exhibition The Golden Bough takes its title from Roman poet Virgil’s The Aeneid, his interest in Virgil’s journey through the underworld. Bond comments that its imagery references a cyclic view of the cosmos, and “the making, un-making, and re-making of all things”. Feb 21- March 10.

Tatau: Sāmoan Tattooing and Photography, Ashburton Art Gallery, 327 West St.

A survey exhibition of contemporary Sāmoan tatau (tattooing), toured by Te Papa Tongarewa and featuring photographs by Mark Adams, Greg Semu, John Agcaoili, and Angela Tiatia. For five decades, Mark Adams has documented Sāmoan tattooing families. Greg Semu is recognised for his self-portraits from the 1990s, John Agcaoili for his 2016 photographs of Sāmoan tattooists, and Angela Tiatia for her documentation of traditional tattoo and her identity as a Sāmoan woman. Until Feb 17.

Group Exhibition, HOLDFAST, Orion Powerhouse Station, Akaroa, 1 Rue Pompalier

Five Canterbury artists: Dorothy Helyer, Lynne Lambert, Jan Robertson, Kristin Stephenson and Sue Upritchard have worked with one another for almost 30 years. All are graduates from the Ilam School of Fine Arts, but HOLDFAST is the first time they have exhibited together. They comment: “The exhibition’s strength is in our diversity, our friendship and art practices. Our very different approaches to mediums and subjects showcase engaging and thought-provoking works.”

Joe Clarke, teethlikescrewdrivers and Jonny Waters, Liminal Beings. TyanHaus, 6 Carlyle St, Sydenham

Described by its artists as not only thinking outside the box, but “never in the box to begin with”. So where does Liminal Beings fit? Based in Ōketeupoko (the hills above Lyttelton), teethlikescrewdrivers works with letters and type, repurposing artworks and found objects. Clarke is a Ngāi Tahu artist, creating skateboards characterised by “extreme cropping, warping and distorted images”, and Ōhinehou Lyttelton-based graffiti artist Waters works between bold, graphic styles and raw, expressive painterly pieces. Feb 17–23.