Greg Smith: Behind These Walls – Auckland’s Modernist Murals

Greg Smith: Behind These Walls – Auckland’s Modernist Murals
19 September – 7 October

Opening in the Verge Gallery as part of the Auckland Heritage Festival
Saturday 19 September 2 – 3.30pm

Artist James Turkington has been credited with painting the city’s first mural in an Auckland coffee house around 1920 upon his return from service in Egypt and France. Although long gone, the Rimmer’s mural would become a part of an era which only recently has been recognised as a definitive period in this country’s cultural history.

The Modernist era mural works of artists such as Milan Mrkusich, Turkington, Russell Clark, John Holmwood, Theo Schoon, Molly Macalister, Dennis Knight-Turner, David Barker, May Smith and many others have more than often been destroyed due to being a part of a building no longer deemed fashionable or usable. They were also seen as being ‘commercial’ or ‘lesser art’, a decorative overlay rather than part of the artists’ oeuvre or the structure of building.

Behind These Walls is a brief history which reveals some of the vast collection of works that adorned this city’s walls, and some that still do – although often hidden!

The exhibition will contain historical and contemporary images, biographic histories of a number of important artists and works, as well as a timeline and guide to Auckland’s Modernist Murals.

Greg Smith website: Lost Property

Auckland Heritage Festival website: http://www.heritagefestival.co.nz/