Changes in the Galleries for 2017

Depot Galleries: The Importance and Necessity of Change

The Depot is prone to neither whimsy nor reactivity. Change is made consciously and as a result of careful analysis of many factors: demographics, both local and national; economics; politics; trends in art and art sales; changes and diversity in arts markets.

Next year we are welcoming the return of the Vernacular Lounge, replacing Small Dog, whose role will be partly fulfilled by the Art Room where member artists will be able to exhibit work throughout the year. We are aware that many artists do not have the work to mount a complete exhibition, and that some would like to maintain an ongoing presence in Devonport and build their relationship with the community.

The Vernacular Lounge is reintroduced in response to an increasing interest in an evolving Aotearoa New Zealand cultural identity, especially as big business, intensive urbanisation, globalisation affect our environment, heritage and history. The following website documents the danger in which heritage is placed.

The Vernacular Lounge

The Vernacular Lounge is an intimate living room which sheds a light on the influences that shape Aotearoa New Zealand’s evolving and distinctive cultural identity as defined by its art, architecture, literature, film and other cultural forms. In a contemporary, globalised context the vernacular is an even more important component of the Depot’s raison d’etre. The ‘lounge’, while not peculiar to New Zealand, is traditionally and typically the social hub of the New Zealand home and it is in this spirit and form that the Vernacular Lounge will host and initiate exhibitions, publications, events and showcases, that explore and develop our cultural vernacular.

Events and exhibitions in the Vernacular Lounge have included tributes to Don Binney and Ralph Hotere, an exhibition of vernacular architecture and a history of peace protests in New Zealand. They have explicitly or implicitly explored the question; in the midst of diversity, is there an elusive quality, a ‘national identity’, which binds us all?

Coming up in the Vernacular Lounge: Fairburn Rocks

Next year we are excited to welcome to the Vernacular Lounge cultural icon A.R.D  Fairburn, arguably one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant poets. This, our inaugural exhibition, Fairburn Rocks will feature his rare rock drawing panels hand-blocked on to fabric by the Devonport poet and artist A.R.D. Fairburn in the 1950s. It will be held in the Vernacular Room at the Depot Artspace in Devonport in March 2017, to mark the 60^th anniversary of his premature death in March 1957.