On Wednesday 27 May, we welcomed a lovely gathering of Friends to view Pātaka’s new initiative: a revolving exhibition wall devoted to displaying an artwork from the collection, which currently is Gregory O’Brien’s ‘Ode to an Abandoned Whaling Station’, 2016.
Ioana Gordon-Smith talked about the artist, who has a history of exhibiting at Pātaka, the work, its context and meaning in his art practice at that time. This was followed by a fascinating in depth talk by Lotte Kellaway introducing her role as Registrar, a role she loves, that includes: managing the collection and loans of Pātaka’s works; managing the receipt, care of loans from galleries, collectors and artists for exhibitions and developing those in person relationships; the collection policy; and the huge potential value of the proposed digitisation project.
We will organise more of these talks for Friends as the works change – and, as members requested, we will spend more time discussing the artwork and artist, along with extending our understanding of how it fits into the scope of the collection for that type of work. Later in the year, we will also organise Lotte to give a back-of-house look at the collection for a small group