Watch this Ovenden Lecture here: Ovenden Lecture 2023
Join us in the Gallery for the annual Ovenden Lecture, presented 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.
Peter Simpson