Curated by Elizabeth Alley, Avenal McKinnon and Keith Ovenden.

“Nigel Brown makes me want to paint”, said poet Glenn Colquhoun of Brown’s portrait of him ‘Glenn at Dusky’, which is included in the NZ Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition Beginnings. “His paintings think aloud”.

Beginnings, opened at the NZ Portrait Gallery on Thursday Nov 18 and runs until February 20. “This is a watershed moment for the Portrait Gallery” director Avenal McKinnon said. “This exhibition celebrates the NZ Portrait Gallery’s permanent home in Shed 11, and shows our own collection for the first time.”

The Gallery currently lacks funding to enable the purchase of acquisitions and relies on gifts, portrait donations, sponsorships, and prize-winning portraits from the bi-ennial Adam Portraiture Award as well as works from the permanent loan collection.

“While we continually seek ways to build our collection, this exhibition is an excellent start towards a significant national collection”, McKinnon says. The range extends from the 1890s to 2009, between the 1897 James Nairn portrait of Rev. Alexander Dasent, to Freeman White’s recent portrait of musician Barnaby Weir. Photographic works (Richard Brimer’s portrait of Olivia and Peter McLeavey and Jane Ussher’s Mavis Rivers ) and video and audio portraits of writers Vincent O’Sullivan, Barbara Anderson and Catherine Chidgey, are juxtaposed with William Beetham’s portrait of Henry Williams, two Evelyn Page portraits of Bruce and Diana Mason and a recent work by Stephen Martyn Welch of Roger Hall.

McKinnon said “Now we have our own home, our focus will be on developing the collection and encouraging portrait donations and bequests in order to build a truly national collection”.