Sarjeant gallery opening ends bumpy ride for iconic arts venue

This article was originally published by the Sunday Star Times (December 8, 2024).

In November, an opening-day hīkoi led by Brass Whanganui paraded from Whanganui River up the hill to the newly renovated Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery. Trombones honked. Tubas boomed. Kids banged drums. A woman, head piled high with dreadlocks, came dressed in a flamboyant World of Wearable Art-esque dress shaped like the original Sarjeant building. The gallery’s neoclassical pillars and ornaments were recreated in fabric and extended two metres out from her hips. She smiled and struck a pose for photos.

Outside the gallery, kapa haka performers sang for the opening-day crowds; people milled about, chomped on burgers and lounged on the grass. Ruapehu, shrouded behind clouds in the far distance, looked on, and the Whanganui awa swirled and eddied nearby.

An orderly crowd of people moved through the renovated gallery as the voices of waiata singers in the foyer floated upwards into the spectacular new wing, Te Pātaka o Tā Te Archie John Taiaroa. People gazed upwards, too, in the Sarjeant’s distinctive domed gallery, at Matthew McIntyre-Wilson’s magnificent installation of hīnaki (eel traps) and korotete (storage vessels for piharau, or lampreys). People chatted and paused, mesmerised, in front of Whanganui-born artist, Edith Collier’s, poignant portraits.

Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery has been closed for 10 years. Now it is open — boasting a large new wing and expanded facilities, including a cafe, meeting rooms and upgraded collection store — and the people of Whanganui are proud and happy.

There was a palpable, emotional sense, at the opening weekend events, of the long road that had been navigated to get to this moment. Speechmakers at the opening mihi referenced people who had passed away before the reopening and the presence of many thinkers, fundraisers, organisers, activists and artists emanated from the original gallery and its new extension.

This renovation has a complicated history. The idea to revitalise the Sarjeant’s original, Oamaru-stone building was suggested as early as 1977, when then director, Gordon H Brown, advised the council that the gallery needed work to meet modern collection and preservation standards for art. Proposals and plans followed in the decades after and, in 1999, a design by Warren and Mahoney Architects won a competitive process.

Enter Michael Laws and his campaign for the Whanganui mayoralty. In 2004, as the newly elected mayor, Laws scuttled the renovation plans, called for the resignation of the chairman of the Sarjeant Gallery Trust Board and fostered division amongst the community.

In a 2004 opinion piece he wrote a startlingly vicious take-down of people who enjoy the arts. He described the NZ Symphony Orchestra as “bleating” about their funding needs; opera singers as “fat freaks” who “warble in foreign languages”; and artists as dirty and smelly. Laws wanted to sever the relationship between the gallery, its staff and their community, and publicly demonised the people who enjoyed its exhibitions and activities.

After Laws derailed the extension project the Sarjeant was left to operate without a director for a decade. And, in a moment of unhappy irony, after the people of Whanganui, supporters in central government, mana whenua, and the Whanganui City Council had managed to resurrect the renovation, Aotearoa went into level 4 lockdown on March 21, 2020, the exact day that the first sod on the renovation project was to be turned.

These obstacles make the Sarjeant’s new wing and refurbished and earthquake-strengthened original building all the more impressive, and emblematic of a suturing of the gap between gallery and community.

On November 9 at the opening weekend, Whanganui’s community was there — twirling poi, dancing and enjoying the exhibitions — as well as Chris Finlayson, former minister for arts, culture and heritage, who was integral in restarting the renovation; representatives from Whanganui iwi and hapū; Whanganui’s mayor, Andrew Tripe (singing the gallery’s praises); and Nicola Williams, Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery Trust chair since 2014.

Inside the gallery, there are other sutures and bridges; stories and histories woven together. The west-facing extension was designed by architects at Warren and Mahoney in a collaborative, co-design process with Te Kāhui Toi o Tūpoho, a local artists collective appointed by Te Rūnanga o Tūpoho, a group of hapū from the lower parts of Whanganui River.

You enter the gallery through a new atrium that sits between the original building and the extension, and your eyes are immediately drawn up to a stunning carved waka bridge, Te Pito o Rehua, made from black tōtara and designed and carved by artists from the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua. Described as an umbilical cord, this spectacular waka feeds and connects the two distinct spaces, and its adornment includes carved koikoi pakati (chevrons representing the long-tailed cuckoo), takarangi (sky spirals) and huruhuru toroa (albatross feathers).

The act of life-giving, of connection to the flow and force of Whanganui River, is also visible in the black granite that wraps around the new wing. The granite’s glossy, reflective surface is enriched with aramoana patterns and glitters with metal tioata (crystals) that mimic the flash and spark of sunlight reflecting off water — so bright and so beautiful, you almost need to look at the building side-on.

The renovated Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery will change Whanganui city in ways that can be budgeted for and evaluated, and in ways that remain unforeseen and unpredictable. From its hilltop vantage point, nestled alongside the ever-moving river, the gallery is connected to other regional galleries, studios and public sculpture in Taranaki and Manawatū via the Coastal Arts Trail, and will attract tourists and gallery goers travelling through the region.

Less quantifiable by counting tourist dollars and eyeing the council’s budget lines are the changes the Sarjeant has the potential to catalyse in the relationships, histories and hearts of the people of Whanganui and its visitors. The new architecture physically manifests a bicultural conversation between mana whenua and tauiwi, and the challenge now is to honour this potential in the gallery’s programming, staffing, interpretation and outreach activities.

The Sarjeant’s opening weekend was the end of a bumpy ride for the gallery and its supporters, but it’s a ride that has arrived at a tantalising, bright horizon. A result of the productive co-design process is a building that will mutate. There are ceilings and other spaces throughout the Sarjeant that have been left, ready for future artists to examine, respond to and create new works with that will physically remain part of the gallery.

It’s not only the exhibitions, then, that will change and switch out over time, but also the building itself, as artists explore and critique this structure and its intertwined history with the land it sits upon. Such responsive, metamorphosing architecture is both a creative and political act, and one that will draw visitors and artists back, again and again, to Te Whare o Rehua on its sandy hill in the crook of Whanganui River.