MEDIA RELEASE: Visionary arts philanthropists launch 50th anniversary book with Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
26 March 2025
Co-editors Megan Shaw (left), Sue Gardiner (right) with Chartwell founder Rob Gardiner (centre), in front of Peter Robinson, Ritual and Formation, 2013, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Chartwell Collection.
A landmark book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Chartwell Project will launch at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki on 4 April 2025.
Published by The Chartwell Collection Trust and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Being, Seeing, Making, Thinking: 50 Years of The Chartwell Project immerses readers in the passion and energy driving Chartwell’s work and its impact on the visual arts in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Since its establishment in 1974, Chartwell has championed the importance of creative visual thinking, shaping an expansive collection of contemporary art and an enduring programme of philanthropic, outreach and educational support.
Illustrating over 150 significant artworks selected from the Chartwell Collection as well as rarely seen archival imagery of artists and exhibitions, the book showcases the integral role creative thinking and making plays in our lives and its potential to create positive change.
Featuring a preface by Chartwell’s founder, Rob Gardiner, an essay by Chartwell’s chair, Sue Gardiner, and a Timeline by co-editor and manager Megan Shaw, this book offers insight into the art, artists and remarkable story and philosophy of the Chartwell Project. It also features an introduction to Squiggla, an impactful Chartwell outreach project which calls on us all to turn our attention towards sense-based creative experiences that are missing from too many lives.
Fifty artwork text contributions by multi-generational creative voices and art historians from across Oceania, the United States and Europe offer fresh perspectives on significant artworks illustrated from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, Director of Auckland Art Gallery Kirsten Lacy, says “The Chartwell Project is entirely visionary. There is none other like it in Aotearoa New Zealand . . . Its impact of 50 years of activity in the visual arts has been vast . . . Audiences, the commercial gallery world, and artists throughout New Zealand have been supported and lifted because of Chartwell’s care and collecting.”
An integral part of The Chartwell Project was the establishment of The Chartwell Collection in 1974, now one of Australasia’s most significant contemporary art collections. In an important partnership, the collection of over 2000 artworks is held on long-term loan at Auckland Art Gallery where works are regularly exhibited.
As Chartwell wraps up a year of 50th anniversary exhibitions around New Zealand, (March 2024 - March 2025), the book celebrates five decades of creative investment in the continuing process of imaginative exploration and the generation of new forms of thought. It is a vision rooted in the belief that art can change how we think about and understand our place in the world.
The book will be available from the Gallery’s shop and online as well as at all good bookstores from 4 April 2025.
Additional information:
- Number of works in the Chartwell Collection to March 2025: 2191 works of New Zealand, Australian and international contemporary art.
- Number of works loaned for 50th Anniversary exhibitions: 106
50th anniversary exhibition locations:
- Waikato Museum, Hamilton: Decades Charted:A window into the Chartwell Collection, 23 February to 21 July, 2024
- Objectspace, Auckland: Ballón Assemblé: Don Driver with Jack Hadley, 15 June to 18 August, 2024
- The Physics Room, Christchurch: Like a broth, Like a cure, 1 June to 14 July 2024
- Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland: MILKSTARS Sound Constellations in the Chartwell Collection. 17 August 2024 to 20 October 2024
- City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi hosted by Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington: Generation X : 50 artworks from the Chartwell Collection, 27 July to 20 October 2024
- Te Atamira, Whakaari Queenstown: Lyrics and Lines, 28 September 2024 to 9 February 2025
- The Suter Art Gallery, Nelson, Stop Making Sense: Surrealist Legacies, 20 October 2024 to 9 February 2025
- Currently on show: a new archival exhibition Being, Seeing, Making, Thinking: 50 Years of the Chartwell Project at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki curated by Freya Elmer (Archivist/Librarian), Philippa Robinson (Research Library And Archives Manager) and Megan Shaw to celebrate the anniversary period.
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