The Day I Went to the City!

On the 8th of August 2019 I had a day off. So because I’m a super cool twenty-something I went to the Auckland Museum, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. I had a great time and I filled a li’l travel sketchbook and here it is: The Day I went to the City. I won’t lie, there was some selective editing of the day. I didn’t record in there how I got lost then accidentally arrived in the right place to go to the Art Gallery. Nor did I note down that I parked in the parking building one before I wanted and had to pay $19.50 for an hour’s parking. There’s no victorious montage of me taking the right exit on to and then off of K Road, no hero shot of me not driving past that weird on ramp like I usually do. Everything that is in here is accurate though, even the scale drawing of the moa.

Close up of Patrick Pound’s ‘The Photographer’s Shadow’ (2012).

Auckland Museum is free for Auckland residents but you do have to take proof of address. Luckily I had a postcard from a from a friend (Kelly that’s your postcard from San Fransisco!) to get me in.

This waka was so long!!! Te Toki a Tapiri the last of the great māori war canoes. It’s 25m long and all carved from one tōtara! It was built in 1836 for Te Waaka Tarakau of Ngāti Kahungunu near Wairoa in Hawke’s Bay.

The rock window is actually down in the carpark, the Museum is built on the crater ring of the Pukekawa volcano. After it erupted it was a lava lake, then a freshwater lake, then a swamp, which slowly filled with sediment before it was drained to be used for sports fields and the Auckland Domain and Christmas in the Park and stuff like that. In the underground carpark they have that window so you can see the layers of rock that are under the museum. Pretty cool.

BOOK BAGS!! THOSE WERE THE DAYS! THE BOOK BAG DAYS. CAN WE GO BACK TO THOSE DAYS??? Please?

I like how the new bags have no branding and no sexism. Very refreshing.

Found this wicked as Fijian camakau when I got lost after the Bag Exhibit. I often get lost when visiting om museums. They don’t have a straightforward layout and I get disorientated in those side rooms.
—In the Louvre I accidentally came across the Venus de Milo in a room of statues throwing shapes. While trying and failing to follow the signs to the Mona Lisa (It’s small and not WOAH. There was a relief print of it in some random room that was way better).—

The camakau was next to a section on Kiribati which felt really weird because I went to school with a girl from Kiribati (Hi Rotati, wherever you are.) Kiribati is sinking that’s true. It felt like reading the history of something that’s not done yet but everyone’s speaking in the past tense about it. It was a melancholy moment next to a school group all doing a bunch of dumb museum school trip activities having a great time.

Young Sir Ed and Old Sir Ed.

Alright so I did get lost again. In my defence it was because they’re renovating and I couldn’t get on the bit that was on the map.

If you ever get the chance to have & sushi, go to & sushi. It’s amazing and delicious and yum.
…

Get there before 2pm though, they run out fast what with being so delicious.

Suffragette staircase on the way up to the gallery. I like the suffragette stairs.

At the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki there’s free entry for New Zealand residents. Unlike the Museum you don’t need proof of address. They have a bunch of options including having a New Zealand bank card.

I went to university with Jasmine Togo-Brisby She’s an amazing artist it’s wonderful to see someone who was in the same draughty studios a few years ago doing so well. She’s doing a masters degree now, represented by the Page Blackie Gallery, and is the 2019 Artist in Residence at the Dunedin School of Art.

Definitely check out her work, it’s all based around the South Pacific Slave Trade, she’s a fourth generation Australian South Sea Islander and has done a lot of breath taking work around the slave trade and the South Sea Islanders being kidnapped to work in the Australian sugar plantations.
If you get the chance to see her work, do it. You will not be disappointed.

Boy oh boy was I excited when I saw these works by Arnold Manaaki Wilson.
First because the wall text said that he was very influenced by Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures and I’ve been to St. Ives and saw the Barbara Hepworth museum! And he was SO DEFINITELY influenced by Hepworth.
Second, I’m such a fan of Tāne. This is a woman who drove ten hours in a day to go see a tree and come back because Tāne Mahuta is the atua of the forests and the birds. He’s the one holding Papa and Rangi apart. Tāne is the largest living Kauri tree and he’s up there in the Waipoua Forest which is beautiful and he’s so big and so old (1,250-2,500 years old) and I really love Tāne.

Just when you thought you were out of the woods (HA good joke) there’s ANOTHER TĀNE SCULPTURE!!

Actual Tāne Mahuta from our trip up there on the 30th of August 2018 (Almost a year already!)

I have a lot of time for this one.

There you go! The Day I went to the City.

Maybe I’ll go somewhere else sometime and do this again. It’s fun and a chance to draw stuff I would never normally.