AUCKLAND.- As Auckland Art Gallery prepares for a milestone $90 million restoration and expansion project, a new exhibition opening this Saturday reflects on a significant figure in its history. Colin McCahon, New Zealand’s greatest 20 th century painter, worked at Auckland Art Gallery from 1953 to 1964, starting out as a part-time cleaner and quickly rising to the role of Keeper.

Towards Auckland: Colin McCahon the Gallery Years considers his professional and artistic contributions during that decisive decade in which the gallery evolved from adolescence to adulthood. His former colleague and friend Hamish Keith is uniquely placed to guest curate this exhibition, which coincides with the opening of the restored McCahon House in French Bay, West Auckland.

Keith says McCahon played a significant role in making sense of New Zealand’s vast visual heritage and making connections between past and present painters.

“Colin’s determination that New Zealand art should not be seen as some hopeless fringe event, but as one of the fundamental reasons for the gallery’s existence, laid the basis for the gallery we enjoy and celebrate forty years later,” he says.

Towards Auckland is named after the exquisite 1953 watercolor series which captures the view on the bus trip into town from McCahon’s Titirangi home. The gallery years marked a critical shift in McCahon’s development as a painter, when he was as much a student of its collections as a teacher of art in its attic studio.

Keith argues that until the 1960s, New Zealand art suffered a preoccupation with landscape and issues of national identity. He says McCahon returned from a study trip to the United States to create a series of Northland works which “tossed out the tired baggage of European modernism” in favor of influences from West Coast USA.This is seen in three privately-owned Northland landscape paintings brought together for the first time since the early 1960s. The show’s center-piece is Te Papa’s remarkable 16panel work The Second Gate Series 1962 which reveals McCahon’s shift during the gallery years from regional themes to issues of urban and global concern. Made when the fear of nuclear holocaust was a constant, the Gate Series was revolutionary in expressing very real human fears and hopes.

Hamish Keith gives a free public talk at Auckland Art Gallery on 20 August at 12pm. William McCahon discusses the contemporary and spiritual relevance of his father’s paintings on 3 September at 12pm. Former contemporary art curator Alexa Johnston talks about McCahon paintings acquired during her time at the gallery on 17 September at 1pm and on 1 October at 12pm, Auckland University English professor Peter Simpson talks about the crucial shift in McCahon’s practice.

Other key works from these important Auckland years are on show at Titirangi’s Lopdell House from 25 August to 8 October. McCahon House in French Bay is open to the public on weekends between 10am and 2pm.

Hamish Keith has known Colin McCahon since he was 12 years old, when McCahon worked for his father, Hamish Keith, and Doris Lusk’s husband Dermot Holland at their Christchurch jewelry manufacturing firm. McCahon later went into partnership with his brother Colin Keith, but moved to Auckland after both businesses went bankrupt. McCahon was Keeper of the gallery when Keith moved north in 1958, a position Keith took over when McCahon left to teach at Elam in 1964.

Colin McCahon (19191987) is widely acknowledged as New Zealand’s greatest 20 th century painter. Born in Timaru, he studied at Dunedin School of Art from 193739. His early works sought to reveal the unique qualities of the New Zealand landscape, later imagining religious subjects within our hills. Supporting himself and his family with seasonal work, he lived in various towns throughout the South Island until 1948 when he settled in Christchurch. In 1953, he moved to Auckland to the prospect of a job at Auckland City Art Gallery. Starting initially as a part-time cleaner, then working as an attendant, he later attained the position of Keeper, holding the role until 1964. As well as participating in the day to day running of the gallery, McCahon curated and hung many exhibitions, researched and wrote catalogues, cared for the collection and taught painting classes in the gallery’s attic. With director Peter Tomory and other colleagues, he played a critical role in recognizing the importance of New Zealand art, both historic and contemporary. McCahon’s gallery years were also artistically productive. The period saw a major stylistic shift in his practice from a cubist-influenced style to the development of his own painting idiom, which increasingly drew on forms abstracted from the landscape, symbols and text. Thematically, his attention turned from regional subjects to those that responded to his urban environment and to global issues. He also developed a renewed interest in religious themes, which became an abiding concern. From 1964 he taught painting at Elam School of Fine Arts, retiring in 1971 allowing him finally to become a fulltime painter. He continued practicing until 1982, when ill health effectively ended his career. His work traversed subjects as diverse as landscape, identity, religion, faith, doubt and the threat of warfare but his ultimate concern was with the human condition. Not only was McCahon a remarkable painter, but the critical thought and philosophical enquiry of his works carry great weight, continuing to resonate with viewers today.

Hamish Keith has been involved in various facets of the arts for nearly forty years. Trained in sculpture at Canterbury School of Art, he was appointed student assistant at Auckland City Art Gallery in 1958. He rose to the role of keeper, before leaving the gallery in 1970 to pursue freelance writing and broadcasting opportunities. The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, under his chairmanship from 1975 to 1981, increased the national reach of the council, established the Maori and South Pacific Arts Council (MASPAC) and ensured the realization of Te Maori. He subsequently sat on the board of the Auckland City Art Gallery and was chairman of the National Art Gallery. His credits as an author are long and varied. While at the gallery he curated and wrote catalogues for exhibitions including the groundbreaking 1966 show Eight New Zealand Artists; the first survey of contemporary New Zealand painting shown in Australia. With Gordon Brown, in 1969, he wrote the seminal book An Introduction to New Zealand Painting, which has run to several editions. In recent years he has worked as a writer, art consultant, curator, columnist and art critic for a wide variety of institutions. Currently, he has a television series on the history of New Zealand art under production and is writing his memoir.