Background Matters: Portraiture and Place in Aotearoa

A picture is a whole world unto itself. Step beyond the frame and see what you find. Background Matters: Portraiture and Place in Aotearoa asks what can be revealed when we view the sitter of a portrait in the expanded field of their surroundings. In bringing the background to the fore, this exhibition subverts the hierarchy of subject and setting to consider the portraiture of Aotearoa New Zealand from a fresh vantage point.

Drawn from the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata and other key galleries and collections, these works reveal narratives of belonging, self-expression, creativity and care. Far from an afterthought or decorative embellishment, the settings of these portraits speak not only to the vision of their artists but to the lives lived by their sitters, which extend far beyond the boundary of a frame.

Whether exterior or interior, playful or sincere, familiar or made strange, by bringing the background into focus this exhibition asks us to consider the worlds we inhabit and our places within them.

This exhibition is curated by Maddie Brooks Gillespie. Bringing it to Christchurch is a collaborative partnership between the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

Photo credit: Robert Cross

Maddie Brooks Gillespie (she/her) is an emerging curator and academic based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is a recent graduate of the Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Art History programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Her practice centres primarily around the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities, alongside explorations of memory, history, place and performance in art.