Kinder's Presence

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exhibition Details

After emigrating to New Zealand from Britain, the Reverend Doctor John Kinder soon became well known in Auckland as an Anglican clergyman, military chaplain and teacher. In his private life, he was a prolific amateur painter and photographer.

Kinder is now renowned as one of New Zealand's gifted colonial artists despite only having exhibited publicly on a number of occasions. He was fascinated with Māori culture, indigenous flora, geology and the thermal regions, gardens and the development of settler communities including local Church of England architecture.

Kinder's watercolours are meticulous, a result of working from preparatory drawings and colour studies made on location. Sometimes images are reworkings of artworks he made decades earlier, and at times he created alternative paintings from different viewpoints. Kinder was also an early practitioner of photography, and his images are among the most inventive of colonial camera artists.

Kinder's Presence includes a selection of the artist's watercolours and photographs presented with recent work by New Zealand photographers Mark Adams, Chris Corson-Scott and Haruhiko Sameshima. Like Kinder, these contemporary artists use large-scale negatives that can render minute detail. These artists' interest in, and respect for, Kinder is revealed in their return to places and subjects that Kinder painted or photographed.

Date
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Curated by
Ron Brownson
Location
Mezzanine level
Cost
Free entry

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