News
A hundred works. Seven decades. One show that finally gives Invercargill's art collection the attention it deserves.
Spring: What We Kept is now open at the transitional public art gallery in the city centre, running until Sunday September 27. The exhibition pulls together 100 artworks first shown at IPAG's annual Spring exhibition — a tradition stretching back to 1951, when it began at Anderson House.
Those acquisitions now account for more than 10 percent of the gallery's entire collection. The works on display include award-winners, invited artists, and selected entries judged to have lasting artistic and cultural significance for the region.
Gallery manager Sarah Brown said the show traces a story that is as much about Southland as it is about art.
"For more than 60 years, our annual Spring exhibition drew hundreds of entries from artists across the motu. The exhibition here today reflects the stories of our artists, our community, and our country across more than half a century," Brown said.
"Spring carries so many connotations. To all of us, it means renewal and growth, and it also means change. Art has the innate ability to reflect our society – the styles, the culture, and the deeply-rooted issues lurking beneath everything else – at any given point in time. It holds up the mirror, and shows us who we are."
The Spring exhibition had a stop-start history before arriving at its current home. After Anderson House closed, it moved briefly to City Gallery, then paused while IPAG shifted focus to collection care and relocation. In 2024, IPAG and the Southland Art Society merged the Spring exhibition with the ILT Art Awards to create the ILT Murihiku Art Awards, reviving the tradition after its hiatus.
"We are really excited to share this exhibition with our community. To have the opportunity to create what is essentially a capsule of our collective past, and give these works a new lease on life, encourages our manuhiri to consider how we have all grown, changed, and evolved in the past seven decades. It's a journey we hope encourages visitors to not only appreciate the incredible works that call Invercargill home, but reflect on the changes that have shaped us," Brown said.
The exhibition also acknowledges the funders, donors, and benefactors whose generosity built the collection in the first place. The people who quietly kept the thing alive while everyone else got on with their lives.
Spring: What We Kept is open now. It closes Sunday September 27.