Here’s a cou­ple of exhi­bi­tions with open­ings that you’ll want to attend, and one that you real­ly ought to see before it clos­es.

First up, Page Black­ie Gallery (which is a much less geo­graph­i­cal­ly con­fus­ing name than its pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion as Tinako­ri Gallery) launch­es a new exhi­bi­tion of Gina Jones’ light works tomor­row night (Tues­day 24th from 5:30pm). Jones’ work will be famil­iar to many from her per­ma­nent instal­la­tion in the gallery, and even if the Page Black­ie crowd tends towards an old­er demo­graph­ic (you could almost hear the old mon­ey rustling at the recent Max Gim­blett launch), the open­ings can still be live­ly affairs: the Masked Barfly warns us to get there ear­ly and stake out the drinks table.

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The open­ing of Jane Kel­la­han’s Humankind exhi­bi­tion, from which the above image “The Heal­ers” is tak­en, sounds like it’s aimed at a slight­ly dif­fer­ent audi­ence. It will fea­ture live music by mem­bers of Phoenix Foun­da­tion and Fat Fred­dy’s Drop, and it’s on at the Wool­store Design Cen­tre (262 Thorn­don Quay) from 5:30pm next Wednes­day the 2nd of July. If you miss the launch but want to see her work, you’ll have to be quick because it’s only on until the 5th, or if you’re real­ly keen she also runs work­shops.

(more after the jump)

You’ll also have to act fast if you want to catch “The Gallery of Helen Hitch­ings”, since it clos­es this Sun­day. It’s actu­al­ly a gallery with­in a gallery, since the Muse­um of Welling­ton City and Sea have part­ly recre­at­ed the epony­mous stu­dio space in an attempt to cap­ture the feel­ing of Welling­ton belat­ed­ly wak­ing up to Mod­ernism. The Ernst Plis­chke fur­ni­ture, Len Cas­tle pot­tery and Rex Fair­burn fab­rics are all evoca­tive of the times, and there’s a wealth of impor­tant art works on the walls.

The only slight mis­step is the deci­sion to screen the recre­at­ed gallery off from vis­i­tors, so that one ends up hav­ing to peer at the room and its works through a bar­ri­er of poly­styrene bricks. I can under­stand the secu­ri­ty prob­lems with let­ting the pub­lic run riot around the McC­a­hons and Angus­es, but when they repro­duce a quote from Hitch­ings about her desire for an atmos­phere where “peo­ple will want to linger & sit & look at things & keep com­ing” the dis­tanc­ing effect is quite incon­gru­ous. Nev­er­the­less, it’s well worth see­ing for its indi­vid­ual selec­tion of key Mod­ern artists and sleek mid-Cen­tu­ry design.