Heritage Collections

John Leech Gallery has a long and distinguished history of collecting, exhibiting and selling a range of significant New Zealand artefacts and artworks.

Adzes, pounders, taiaha and pendants are among the objects created from the early C19th to the middle of last century which are available at the gallery. These utilitarian and ceremonial works shaped from stone, wood, fibre and treasured Pounamu display the sophistication of the pre-European material cultures of Aotearoa and the Pacific Islands.
 
Art created in and of New Zealand by foreign explorers and colonisers during the C18th, C19th and early C20th more often reflected a pre-conceived notion of the country and its inhabitants than reality.
Artists and photographers had to work to the dual requirements of capturing a likeness of what they saw and experienced and also providing imagery that tourists and settler’s families in the ‘mother countries’ demanded. The result was a proliferation of imagery which depicted New Zealand as a ‘new’ and ‘untouched’ country where the land was intended to appear empty and waiting for arrival, or rich in untouched natural resources, and Maori were often depicted with Europeanised features.
Such work by photographers John Kinder, Alfred Burton and George Valentine along with artists John Barr Clarke Hoyte, Alfred Sharpe, Louis John Steele and Charles Goldie can be seen at the gallery and provide an interesting insight to New Zealand’s colonial history. 

For more information on the gallery’s collection of historical Maori and Pacific art, vintage photography and early New Zealand paintings, prints and drawings please contact the gallery.