School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies

Christina Barton

Director
Adam Art Gallery, School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies
address

Phone: 04 463 5254
Fax: 04 463 5024
Location: Room 315, Adam Art Gallery Gate 3 Kelburn Pde, Kelburn Campus

Christina Barton

Qualifications

MA (Auckland)

Research Specialties

Christina's research, teaching and curatorial practice focus on her interest in post-1960s' New Zealand art; draw on her knowledge of contemporary art and theory, and build on her ambition to create a variety of platforms for thinking about art and its histories.

She has gained her knowledge from many years of first-hand contact with the New Zealand and international art scene, through her work as an academic, as a curator working in public art museums in Wellington and Auckland, and as a writer and commentator.

Career Summary

After completing her MA thesis in 1987 on the history of post-object art in New Zealand (1969-1979), Christina took up a position as research assistant at the Auckland Art Gallery Research Library.

This inaugurated a career as a curator in art galleries that has seen her realising various exhibitions and publications in her capacity as Assistant Curator at Auckland Art Gallery (1988-1992) and as Curator of Contemporary New Zealand Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington (1992-1994), as well as independently for various galleries both in New Zealand and Australia.

In 1995 she took up a teaching position in Art History at Victoria University of Wellington. She taught full-time here until 2007, at all levels and across a range of topics, but especially in her specialist subject: New Zealand art.

In April 2007 Christina was appointed Director of the Adam Art Gallery,     Victoria University's custom-built gallery which runs a programme of exhibitions and manages the VUW Art Collection. In this capacity she brings the academic and curatorial strands of her career together, and has developed the gallery as a key platform for teaching and research.

Christina remains active beyond the university as a writer and commentator on contemporary art.

Current Research Projects

Christina's particular research interests cover:

  • the history and legacy of post-object art in New Zealand.

  • the character and consequences of conceptual and critical practices as they have been undertaken locally and internationally from the 1960s to the present.

  • the uses to which photography and related reproductive technologies have been put in recent New Zealand art.

  • the nature and history of art in public space.

Christina is currently researching Billy Apple - New Zealand's leading conceptual artist.

Selected Publications

  • I, HERE NOW Vivian Lynn, Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 2010, 140pp.
  • 'Billy Apple - The Sixties Remembered', Billy Apple: British and American Works 1960-69, The Mayor Gallery, London, 2010, 8-32.
  • 'Bruce Barber in New Zealand 1970 - 1975', Bruce Barber Work 1970-2008, edited by Cleland, Stephen and Blair French, Artspace and Te Tuhi Centre for Art, Sydney and Auckland, 2010, 52-63.

  • 'About Billy Apple—A Life in Parts', Billy Apple, Sourcebook 7/2009, eds Zoe Gray, Nicholaus Schafhausen, and Monika Szewczyk, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2009, 13-29.

  • 'Mind the Gap. Billy Apple: Between British and American Pop 1960-1964', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, special issue: 21st Century Art History, 2009, 162-187.

  • Four Times Painting - for full details see publications list.

  • The Expatriates: Frances Hodgkins and Barrie Bates, Wellington: Adam Art Gallery, 2005.

  • Joseph Kosuth: Guests and Foreigners. Rules and Meanings (Te Kore), Wellington: Adam Art Gallery, 2004 Publication documenting Joseph Kosuth's major site-specified installation.

  • Ground/Work: The Art of Pauline Rhodes, Wellington: Adam Art Gallery and Victoria University Press, 2002- the first monograph on this Christchurch-based artist.

  • "What was Directly Lived has Moved Away into a Representation" - Photography and Post Object Art', Action Replay: Postscript, Auckland: Artspace, 2002, pp 22-39- essay exploring the role of photography in conceptual practices in New Zealand in the 1970s and early 1980s.

  • Art Now: The First Biennial Review of Contemporary Art, Wellington: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 1994- exhibition and catalogue reviewing sculpture / installation in New Zealand.

Click here to see full list of publications by Christina Barton.