New Forrester Gallery curator Anna McLean is excited to be part of the building’s future as it expands.

Anna has been in her new position for a few months now, having been appointed to the role following the end of a curatorial internship at Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

“I wanted to stay down south, this job came up and somehow I got it,” she says.

Hailing from New Plymouth, Anna had worked at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, and says the two places have a similar “strong regional mindset”.  

“I'm quite into contemporary art and I kind of took this position knowing the growth the gallery can have going into the future with the upcoming extension which is about to start, and I think it's got really cool histories.

“I'm quite interested in looking at historical collections or spaces and how they can be recontextualised in a contemporary or a new way of thinking,” she says. 

“I think it's just kind of like reviewing those existing ideologies and offering something different, like the same way of looking at it, but just different, you know?”

Although Anna went to Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, before completing her museum studies, she is reluctant to call herself an artist.

“I don't know . . . I take photos . . . my brain's kind of weird like an artist, but I'm not really. I find being a curator kind of takes up all my time.

“But yeah, I'm really keen to get things going for local artists. I think having the Crucible Residency here and working with Sian (Quennell Torrington) and other residents has been really good to see what we can figure out."

Anna also plans to draw more people into the gallery by running events alongside exhibitions. 

“Like late nights, and yoga in the gallery and stuff. Some bands playing, some DJs, just make it a bit of fun.” 

She thinks it's important to be reaching out to more community groups. 

“This gallery has a good relationship with people in the community, but there's so many community groups that we're not reaching too.”

A piece from Caroline McQuarrie's Like the Turf. Photo: Supplied

Anna’s work blurs into life, and life blurs into work.

“I'm just always doing art stuff.

“I'm going to other galleries on the weekends. I still have a lot to do with Dunedin and a lot of artists in Dunedin are like you're here more than the Dunedin creative people are, but I just think it's just down the road and yeah . . . I just like to be connected.”

Anna says she’s been using her camera more lately, exploring her new home, and it’s been nice to be a bit more creative again.

“I'm kind of still figuring the place out, which has been fun, and finding new places and new people. It's a cool place.

“It's so amazing to have so many people that just take such an interest in the gallery and the art scene.”

Five new exhibitions have been added to the gallery in November, four of which will run until the end of January next year.

Caroline McQuarrie’s Like The Turf is an exploration of Pākehā histories of colonial settlement from Cornwall and Devon, combining photos, embroidery and textiles to bring to the fore the “lesser known histories” of women and families, weaving them into a landscape marked by industry.

“Caroline's based in Wellington and she's a lecturer at Massey,” Anna says.

“She spent time doing a residency at the University of Plymouth in the UK, and then came back and saw quite close similarities between mining and migration and that, between New Zealand and the UK.”

Sharon Mitchell's Alice in Victorian Wonderland has been popular with visitors. Photo: Ashley Smyth

In The Vault, is Ōamaru artist Sharon Mitchell's Alice in Victorian Wonderland, which has been popular with all visitors, Anna says.

“Almost all of these works have sold, which is awesome.”

The works are a blend of cloth needle-sculpture and needle-felted characters from the classic Lewis Caroll story, and each Wonderland character has a corresponding label, offering it an “alternative” or “lesser-known” history.

Dunedin artist Victoria McIntosh’s Sitting Pretty: The Desserts of Discontent is a collection of beige or “skin-coloured” cakes, made from secondhand shapewear, lace, elastic, Tupperware and more.

The cakes are inspired by Mrs Beeton’s Book of Cookery and Household Management (1861). These perfectly formed sculptures explore shared experiences relating to body image, self-expression and autonomy.

Another local artist, Ken Laraman, expresses his views on sea pollution, climate change, consequential ignorance and environmental loss, in his exhibition The Forest Howls Tonight upstairs in the community gallery space.

Perfect pieces from Victoria McIntosh's Sitting Pretty: The Desserts of Discontent. Photo: Supplied

For every painting sold from this exhibition, a donation will be made to charity.

The fifth exhibition, Seriously Valuable Art, is a touring collection which has come from Ashburton Art Gallery, Anna says.

“Everything in it is, they’re works that haven't cost the collector much money, but it encourages people to get involved with collecting in their own sort of ways, without pressure.

“So everything cost $500 or less. But, there's a catch that one work is not, and it is worth, like, probably tens of thousands or even in the hundreds. You've got to try and figure it out.”

The only instructions from the collector was “put them wherever you want, just don't make them look like a Te Papa show, and have one work on a huge wall”, Anna says.

The Forest Howls Tonight runs until December 8, to make way for Wonderlab exhibition Warm Fuzzies, while the others will be showing until January 26, next year.

Part of the proceeds from each painting sold in The Forest Howls Tonight exhibition will be donated to charity. Photo: Supplied