Operating since 2009 under Director Matt Nache, the Gallery has set its own course and proposed a new model for the dealer gallery, blurring the lines between public and private gallery, between dealer and curator, house style and punk attitude. It offers less a consumable list or stable of artists than a family or community of artist/collaborators who come together and work with Nache to each extend their own practice, but also contribute to the greater whole which is the unrelenting forward momentum of this Gallery. Refusing to join the crowd and rejecting the received wisdom that says galleries belong in the big cities, PAULNACHE operates out of the coastal town of Gisborne, on the East Coast of Aotearoa’s North Island. Gisborne provides PAULNACHE with more than just its physical base – a gallery in a refurbished building on the city’s main street. At a time when many galleries claim noncommittally to ‘be based’ in a particular location, PAULNACHE draws its energies and ambitions from this city, and offers much in return. Committed to the local as well as the national, PAULNACHE has built a passionate community for contemporary art in Gisborne, and beyond. PAULNACHE may be rooted in Gisborne, but reaches much further. Regularly launching out from its physical base, the Gallery is renown from its innovative and often subversive presence at art fairs and other events. It holds and supports exhibitions of its artists in other cities and countries, and has a publishing wing which ensures that new thinking and writing on and around its artists is always present.
