Exhibition a runaway success

35,000 people have visited the Paradox Inside exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery so far. Supplied photo.

They are record numbers – 35,000 visitors or the equivalent of a quarter of the city's population through the Tauranga Art Gallery for the Paradox Inside exhibition.

The Art Gallery director Karl Chitham is thrilled. 'People have travelled from all over the country.”

The local politicians are thrilled. 'All demographics of Tauranga enjoying the festival is simply exciting,” says Deputy Mayor Kelvin Clout.

To put that number into some context: 54,101 people visited the Tauranga Art Gallery in the 2015-2016 financial year. This financial year the target was set at 65,000 but the gallery has already had 73,769 visitors – the Paradox Inside exhibition still has more than two weeks to run and the financial year doesn't finish until the end of next month.

'The show and the whole of the Paradox Street Art Festival has given an incredible boost to the energy of the CBD,” says Karl, 'which is great to see.” And there's still more to come before the exhibition closes on June 15.

The wall murals around the city will be explored by night. The guided night walks will happen in the last week of the festival, from June 11 to 15 starting outside Tauranga Art Gallery on the corner of Wharf and Willow Streets. The art gallery will be open late on Thursday, June 15 to give people one last chance to see the show.

The winning pieces of the Paradox Youth Street Art Competition will be exhibited alongside works by Wongi, Lucy McLauchlan and Jacob Yikes from May 29 to June 9 in Toi Ohomai's newly-opened Te Ara o Mauao building at the Windermere Campus.

For the Paradox painting days, five Powerco substations around the central city will be painted by local artists, just as Christchurch's Wongi has recreated the substation at Spring Street. One of the substations will be reimaged by the overall winner of the Paradox Youth Street Art Competition.

Tauranga Art Gallery offers a number of workshops where visitors can print their own street art t-shirt on June 3. Go to the gallery's website artgallery.org.nz/events to book your spot.

Paradox: Tauranga Street Art Festival's exhibition at Tauranga Art Gallery is open daily from 10am to 4.30pm until Thursday, June 15.

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2 comments

Maybe

Posted on 28-05-2017 13:55 | By Accountable

That's why retail has been more quiet than usual in the CBD for the past few weeks. All the available parking has been taken up by the visitors to the Art Gallery. Because of the shortage of accessible car parking that's all it takes to stop the shoppers and clients from coming in to the CBD and once again it is the businesses that suffer the most.


maybe

Posted on 28-05-2017 14:28 | By Capt_Kaveman

they should spend more time on stopping peoples houses been flooded


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