White Chapel

At her Auckland apartment, gallerist Sarah Hopkinson shows how to live with challenging contemporary art.

- Henry Oliver

Even for dedicated appreciators, a relationship with contemporary art is usually divided into two distinct contexts: the home, where paintings, drawings and prints hang on walls and we come to know them in detailed, intimate ways; and galleries and museums, where sculptures, installations, performances and videos sit on plinths, hang from ceilings and fill pitch-black rooms to be seen once or twice and never again. And while we might be more interested in the challenging work of the gallery and the museum, when it comes to living with art, we retreat to works that can rest safely on a wall and not get too much in the way.

For gallerist Sarah Hopkinson, who runs Hopkinson Mossman in Auckland with Danae Mossman, the apartment she lives in behind the gallery is an opportunity to breach those barriers and, in the process, provide an example for clients of how to live with challenging contemporary art.