Taking a wider view

Frances Hodgkins’ Ibiza Harbour (c.1933). Oil on canvas. Collection Dunedin Public Art Gallery. PHOTO: DPAG

Next door to Simon Ingram’s show is “Panorama — an extended view of Frances Hodgkins”. Rebecca Fox talks to curator Lucy Hammonds about the connections between the two exhibitions.

Technology also plays a part in the works on show in “Panorama — An expanded view of Frances Hodgkins”.

As well as featuring the Frances Hodgkins’ works used by artist Simon Ingram in his research for the exhibition next door, it showcases works by other artists in the Dunedin Public Gallery collection who were working in the United Kingdom or Europe in the late 19th century or early 20th century.

Curator Lucy Hammonds says at that moment in British and European art in the early 20th century, artists were moving in a lot of different directions in their practices.

“There were a lot of new technologies that artists were engaged with, from photography to different printmaking processes, to different ways of composition and changing the way they were working with paint and all sorts of different materials and new things happening.’’

Combined with Ingram’s exhibition, Hammonds says it is a good opportunity to build more of a context around Hodgkins’ works by looking at other artists working in that region at the same time.

“To kind of give audiences a way to understand the wider context of change in which the Hodgkins’ works were being produced within.’’

So the exhibition includes works by people who were contemporary to her and she was in dialogue with such as the Bloomsbury group artist Duncan Grant, or Patrick Hayman.

“Artists who are kind of discussed in context with Frances’ own work . But also we’ve built in works by artists working at the same time but that weren’t known to Hodgkins, perhaps lesser known figures or from different geographic regions, but that equally are held in our collection and kind of give a wider perspective again.’’

There are works from the inter-war, avant-garde 1920s period in Germany that have made their way to Dunedin.

“There’s really interesting stories of provenance but also a sort of view into things we don’t always place so much emphasis on because there’s not always a complete story known about a work or a work might be sort of here in isolation, for instance, in the collection.’’

So that is what the title plays with, an idea of this panorama or a wider view around the Hodgkins’ works, which are very well known by the gallery’s audiences.

“So I think the time scale of the works in that exhibition take us from around about 1890 up until the late 50s. It includes works from France, from England, from Germany. There might be some Welsh works. And it includes works on paper and oil paintings, some of which have very rarely been seen.”

Some of the works will be very familiar to visitors while others have been rarely exhibited.

“It’ll also give them new ways of thinking about what Simon’s exhibition is doing in parallel to this in terms of different ways of thinking about things.

‘’And he’s very interested in how painters, in particular, have engaged with technology and new ways of kind of coming at composition and colour and painting construction over time. So what it does is offer a view into what that looks like in real terms through the works of the artists who were engaged in those conversations.’’