Dr Keith Ovenden ONZM

Keith was Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pukenga Whaakata for six years from October 2012 until stepping down in December 2018. In the 13 years he was involved with the Gallery, Keith was tireless in pursuing his vision of a truly national portrait gallery for New Zealand. With his strategic focus and determination he succeeded in transforming a nascent operation into a thriving and respected arts institution of national importance.

In 2019, the Gallery instituted an annual winter lecture to honour Keith’s contribution to the development of the Portrait Gallery. Keith gave the inaugural lecture on 15 August 2019.

He was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the arts, in the 2020 New Year Honours.

This annual winter Ovenden Lecture commemorates Keith Ovenden and his generous support of the Gallery.

Ovenden Lecture 2024: Officers and Men: World War II New Zealand Portraiture by Alan Bollard

Alan Bollard will survey the portrait art done by New Zealand’s official and unofficial war artists during WW2. This ranges from the stiff official officer portraits to the myth and reality of  soldiers around the camp sites and in the battle fields. It includes rough sketches on notepaper, watercolours done in tents at night, and oils painted in studios. Some of it was done for families, some for the official record, and some was wartime propaganda.

Alan Bollard is Chair of The NZ Portrait Gallery. He is a lecturer, Board Director and author, with a background running Treasury, Reserve Bank of NZ and APEC. He has written several books on economists at war, wartime novels, and edited war diaries.

Ovenden Lecture 2023: 'A Splendid head': The Portraits of Colin McCahon, 1938-68 by Peter Simpson

Peter Simpson’s topic for the Ovenden Lecture in 2023 is: ‘A beautiful head’: The Portraits of Colin McCahon, 1938-68. McCahon was not primarily a portrait artist but he did practice portraiture through much of his long career, especially in the first two decades Depending on how portraits are defined, McCahon made more than forty such works, ranging from drawings in pencil or ink to portraits in watercolours, oils or acrylics. His subjects included family members, close friends and colleagues, and anonymous people. Many are both striking and challenging. The fully illustrated lecture will trace the evolution of his portraiture through time, consider the various models, modes and methods he utilised, discuss the margins between portraiture and other figurative subjects, and focus on the most important examples from Elespie Forsyth in 1938 to Gordon H. Brown in 1968.

Peter Simpson has degrees from Canterbury and Toronto universities and taught for 50 years at universities in Canada and New Zealand. He has written and edited many books about New Zealand literature, art and cultural history, including Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-53 and titles on Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Allen Curnow, Kendrick Smithyman, Charles Brasch, Leo Bensemann and Colin McCahon. Since the mid-1990s he has curated four exhibitions and published five books about McCahon, with another due next March from Te Papa Press called Dear Colin Dear Ron on McCahon’s correspondence with Ron O’Reilly. In 2016 he curated Leo Bensemann and Friends: Portraiture and The Group (which included McCahon) for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery; in 2017 he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction. He lives in Auckland.

2022 Ovenden Lecture: Women and Power in New Zealand Portraiture.

Dr Erin Griffey

New Zealand has a long history of powerful women and empowering women. With three female prime ministers, several female Governors-General, and Queen Elizabeth II as our Head of State, New Zealand has been led and represented by women. While the conventions of portraying leaders are well established, these are based on concepts and depictions of male power dating back to antiquity. Female monarchs and leaders have had to negotiate this tradition.  On the one hand, they need to legitimize their power through an accepted language of power-portraiture, but also need to present themselves as women. From 'power suits' to symbolic jewellery, lipstick to haircuts, these details of a portrait of a woman in power are all carefully choreographed and scrutinized. This presentation asks how portraits of New Zealand's female leaders have engaged in this dynamic, taking in painted and photographic portraits, high art and campaign images, both official and informal. Considering the Commonwealth connections and portrait legacy of English female monarchs, the lecture will discuss portraits of British queens and prime ministers including Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher and underscore the distinctive features of portraits of New Zealand's female leaders from Dame Catherine Tizard to Jacinda Ardern. 

2021 Ovenden Lecture: Portraiture In Three Dimensions by Neil Plimmer MNZM

This lecture looks at the role of busts, statues, and bas-relief in the wider field of portraiture and contemporary art, and the differences between 2D and 3D portraiture.