Small-town Gore – until now mostly famous for its annual country and western music festival – is rocking to a different beat and humming up a world-class reputation for fine arts.

Visitors are being drawn to the farming town, 150km south west of Dunedin, to soak up the cutting-edge displays at the Eastern Southland Gallery – nicknamed the Gore-ggenheim after the somewhat more famous New York institution.

The main attractions? Two permanent galleries, added in a $1.2million revamp of the converted library building in 2003. One wing houses the only permanent showing of leading contemporary artist Ralph Hotere, and the other is home to a huge body of New Zealand, Australian, American and African art collected by the late expatriate New Zealand sexologist John Money.

Visiting the gallery

Curator Jim Geddes says visitors to the gallery are as surprised to come face to face with life-sized African carvings, such as the 1.8m tall hunter carrying a slain beast (from Mali), as they are to walk into a room displaying eight works by celebrated New Zealand artist Rita Angus.

Geddes describes Money’s collection, which also features paintings by Theo Schoon and American Lowell Nesbitt, and Aboriginal works from Australia, as “quite an eclectic mix”.

“But it’s one that he saw fitting together in an international context. He saw strong links between cultures, including Maori, Pacific and West African.”

Money himself described his artworks, collected over 50 years, as “the splendours of civilisation”.

A win for Gore

Bringing the permanent exhibitions to Gore was indisputably a huge coup. Geddes says in both cases the acquisitions came about through “personal associations”.

“Ralph (Hotere) was one of the first people to exhibit here when we first opened in 1984. And we had known John Money for a long time. He made a very generous offer and we took it up and that wing has been a great boon.”

Although Geddes downplays his own part in the process, others, including tourism boss Rose McMillan, cannot speak highly enough of him.

McMillan says visitor numbers are up and not through any aggressive marketing campaign. “Visitors are going back home and telling people what we’ve got here in the way of culture and heritage,” she says.

“We’re well renowned now. We’re even in the Lonely Planet.”

Other heritage attractions pulling visitors in include the Hokonui Moonshine museum, which tells the story of bootlegged whisky made in the southern hills, the Gore Historical Museum and the Hook, Line and Sinker fishing museum.

Museums Aotearoa has just awarded Geddes its individual achievement award for “putting Gore on the national cultural map”.

Executive director Phillipa Tocker says Geddes deserves all credit for making the gallery and museums so successful in such an unlikely setting.

“Gore has suffered some setbacks in terms of economic prosperity like many small towns, yet it is absolutely thriving and has this amazing range of art and heritage organisations which all work together.”

Local impact

Geddes says the plan was never to raise the cultural tone of Gore which also has something of a reputation for hoons.

“Every small town has its interesting local lads and hopefully Gore will maintain that because they (hoons) are still kind of colourful. Visitors from another city love to see an old Vauxhall packed to the gunwales with young lads.

“You don’t want to be culturally engineering a place. You want it to be itself.”

Mayor Tracy Hicks says Gore’s identity is now woven through with a strong cultural thread. It’s no longer considered just a gateway to somewhere else, such as Queenstown, Te Anau or Milford Sound.

“Visitor numbers are increasing and people are coming from far and wide, visitors from all over the world who have heard about the Ralph Hotere and the John Money wing. It’s a magnet for people to spend time here.”

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Article by Christchurch-based freelance journalist Joanna Davis.