Exhibition “TRUE LOVE: A Tribute to Grant Lingard”

Thu 29th April – Friday 28th May – 10:00am to 4:00pm – Ilam Campus Gallery, School of Fine Arts Building 2, University of Canterbury
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Grant Lingard was many things: from a West Coast mining family, he was a snappy dresser, an avid collector of everything from action-toy figurines to records, a Punk Disco dancer, a storyteller, an instigator of the Christchurch Artists’ Collective, companion to his black cat Black Cat, a graduate of the School of Fine Arts programme, and, of course, a gay man at a moment when attitudes towards homosexuality, and the law, were changing.⠀
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If he has the distinction of being ‘…considered by many to be New Zealand’s leading gay visual artist’[1], he was also a victim of the tragedy that struck the gay community in the 1980s: AIDS. With his death Aotearoa New Zealand lost an artist and art activist of significance too soon, his legacy left barely revealed. Perhaps this is a failure to acknowledge “queer art heroes”, or because the 1980s are easy to forget, or because his work had ephemeral, feral qualities that make its collection and preservation difficult.⠀
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While TRUE LOVE cannot fill the void, 25 years later, we hope to contribute to an ongoing discussion about this wonderful, queer person. It is our (im)provisional response to Grant, his memory, his artwork.⠀
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Grant’s art alongside that from Bronwyn Takle, Diane Miller, Gary Freemantle, Gina Ferguson, Graham McFelin, Grant Takle, Jeremiah Boniface, Jessica Douglas, Julian Holcroft, Michael Armstrong, Paul Dew, Paul Johns, Paul Rayner, Richard Reddaway, Ruth Watson, Sara Ayad, Sandra Bushby, Seraphine Pick, Simon Morris, Teri Johnson, Terry Urbahn and Trevor Fry. Catalogue essays by David Herkt and Peter Derksen.