Monopoly Day

Money, wealth, and houses – what game pops to mind?

Join the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery to explore these themes on occasion of Stars start falling artist Ani O’Neill’s artwork monoPoly which is based on the famous game that everyone loves to hate. We’ll have Monopoly games set up for you to play and have a kōrero about how housing and economic issues affects a community’s culture.

Ani O'Neill describes her crochet works as paintings, pushing up against perceived distinctions between "art" and "craft" - and the value assigned to each in the context of the art gallery. MonoPoly and Counter Productive are landscapes, both toying with the genre's particular way of seeing fashioned by capitalism and its product, imperialism. They abstract the gentrification of Auckland's inner city into crochet cityscapes.

Stars start falling brings together existing and newly commissioned works by Teuane Tibbo, Ani O’Neill and Salome Tanuvasa, many seen here in public for the first time. Stars start falling puts Tibbo’s paintings from the ’60s and ’70s into conversation with work made by Ani O’Neill in 1999 and new commissions by Salome Tanuvasa, stretching more than fifty years of artistic practice. The artists’ shared sensitivity toward the conditions under which, and locations where, art is made gives a complex view of the shifting landscape of Pacific life in Aotearoa over the last half century.

Image credit: monoPoly, 1999, installation view, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Image: Hayley Bethell.