Breathless

One of the summer blockbusters at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki was a show sourced not from overseas. Gallery staff adopted an intentionally queer gaze and directed it inwards, picking largely from the institution’s own shelves to bring together Manpower: Myths of Masculinity.

This is not really the case though; this is a show sourced from overseas. Most of the works in Manpower originally came from the other side of the world, brought here at a time when the other side of the world was weeks distant, not hours. They form part of the original bequests that, back in 1887, established the art gallery as one of this country’s pre-eminent cultural institutions.

Manpower looks at some key archetypes of masculinity as they exist in the gallery’s collection.

Curators Sophie Mattheisson and Emma Jameson let the exhibition speak as a study that is as much of Auckland and its beginnings as it is