'A Place to call Home', the first group exhibition of contemporary New Zealand Asian art developed by Bergman Gallery, runs until Saturday 8 July
The show proved popular with over 200+ people coming to the opening night, featuring works from the likes of Luise Fong, Louie Bretaña, Tanja McMillan - Misery, Bev Moon, Rhea Maheshwari, Naomi Azoulay, Cindy Huang, Abhi Chinniah and Yeonjae Choi
Home. It is a small word with significant meaning. It is a word that conveys powerful emotion. It means safety, belonging, acceptance, love and security, the tenets that we crave above all else.
'A Place to call Home' speaks to the generational presence of Asian New Zealanders and reveals the role that their art plays in New Zealand's contemporary cultural landscape.
The artwork, by established and emerging New Zealand Asian artists, conveys how these practitioners translate ancestral legacies within their own, immediate surround to examine concepts of home and belonging.
The artists’ narratives recognise traditions that span a great deal of the Pacific and Asian continent, including Korea, China, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Malaysia and the Middle East; traditions that now merge with their New Zealand values and identity.
It generates a commanding dialogue, with distinct voices, stories and perspectives. It is biographical in nature, reflecting a broad conversation of cultural evolution within the New Zealand population at large.
Through paintings, photography, sculpture and ceramics, 'A Place to call Home' places a bright focus on the declaration that New Zealand is indeed, home.
This is an important exhibition is about belonging, acceptance, and cultural identity within New Zealand, even as 1/4 of Aucklanders are Asian descent, cultural institutions, general media and in everyday life, Asians are still generally grouped as ‘Other’.
Asian Kiwis not fully embraced as Kiwis, since the Victorian times.
Bergman Gallery is a dealer galley representing and exhibiting artists from the broader Pacific region. Bergman Gallery is based in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, opening in 2016 & Auckland, New Zealand, opening in 2022.
Alongside a regular schedule of exhibition, the gallery also participates in art fairs and offers an invitational artist in residence programme.
Free parking in the Abbey Street carpark and you can enter the gallery via the carpark.
BERGMAN GALLERY, 3/582 Karangahape Road, Entrance via 2 Newton Road, T: 09 948 0091, bergmangallery.com
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Published 30 June 2023