South Island Māori Rock Art: European interest from the 19th century to the present
Philippa F Graham
Canterbury Museum
RRP $89.99
Publication Date. September 1
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Rock drawings are one of the oldest forms of art with numerous examples throughout the world. There are also many examples in both the North Island and South Island which have been well documented.
A new publication, South Island Māori Rock Art by Philippa Graham looks at the rock art from some of the South Island sites with numerous maps and photographs and graphic depictions of the artworks which were generally painted onto limestone.
The pale, fine textured limestone provided an ideal surface to draw on with artists using the closest material to hand. The black colour was usually charcoal (burnt stick from fires) while the red colour would have been made from Kokowai (red oxide of iron) mixed with bird or fish oil. Where there is no limestone, the drawings would have been incised on the smooth surface of grey-wacke rock.
J L Elmore Drawings at Albury Park (Tengawai Gorge)
That the drawings were made with fugitive materials on perishable surfaces it is a wonder that they have lasted so long, exposed to all types of weather.
The South Island Māori rock drawings, dating back to early Māori occupation, were initially seen as scientific curiosities by many early European explorers and later, museum curators, including Julius von Haast, Alexander Hamilton, Robert Speight, and H.D. Skinner.
Early on there was the debate in European circles about the artistic merits of the rock drawings, and their value to both local and international collectors. Experts such as Dr. J.L. Elmore a visiting American anthropologist and antiquarian collector documented, controversially damaged and removed portions of Māori rock art from sites in the South Island around 1916 encouraged by a few museum curators.
The scale of the paintings was minimal at some sites while at others they are quite extensive. The ornithologist and botanist W R B Oliver noted that at Weka Pass a portion of the paintings were 66 feet (20m) long with about 80 figures between two and three feet in height.
In the mid twentieth century, the different approaches to the works can be seen in the contrasting attitudes of archaeologist Roger Duff and artist Theo Schoon. Duff was initially dismissive of the rock art seeing the works as “doodles”. Theo Schooh however saw the drawing as having greater aesthetic and spiritual significance.
The book is the culmination of many years of exploring and checking the sites by local farmer Philippa Graham, encouraged by landowners, field staff from the Department of Lands and Survey and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.
There has been little written about the history of these rock art sites since Michael Trotter and Beverley McCulloch’s 1971 publication, Prehistoric Rock Art of New Zealand and now with South Island Māori Rock Art, Graham calls on her in-depth research at all of the major New Zealand institutions, in addition to the Thomas Burke Museum, Seattle. She has uncovered fresh material about the sites, the landowners, the governments of the times, archaeologists’ contributions, museums’ involvement, library records and attitudes towards local Māori in early days.
European Sailing Ship, Takiroa Shelter, North Otago
The nameless artists who first daubed charcoal and red ochre on these walls depicted subjects which were generally close to home. The images range from abstract forms, to bird, animal life and people. The presence of bones from moa and the extinct quail suggest that the people who made these images started early in terms of human habitation in the area. There may have been a long break in continuity, as there are also depictions of European sailing ships and animals suggesting that the practice may have been revived in the late eighteenth or early ninetieth century.
The book details the efforts to preserve and record the drawings at various sites. Among these efforts were the overpainting of works at Weka Pass by the and Thomas Herberley and the more recent drawings by Theo Schoon and Tony Fomision.
The book has more than 350 illustrations and maps, an index and a Māori glossary, as well as a chapter focusing on New Zealand artists who have been inspired by the rock drawings. In producing these images, the artists have often produced more refined images and in the case of the New Zealand postage stamps have brought these images to the wider public.
Matariki Stamps 2012 Designer Dane Burke & advisor Brian Allingham and Nga Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust
The artists who have used the imagery include James Turkington, Cliff Whiting, Selwyn Muru, John Bevan Ford, Tony Fomison, Rua Pick, Theo Schoon, Denis Knight Turner and Gordon Walters.
Ōtepoti Dunedin Architecture, a walking guide is the fourth book in the series of handy pocket guides to New Zealand city architecture and is the most extensive yet. It features more than 130 Dunedin buildings in seven, self-guiding walks that range from the university district right across the city to the southern cemetery area and out to Port Chalmers.
With easy-to-follow maps, a well informed and engaging text by well-known architecture writer John Walsh and images by architectural photographer Patrick Reynolds,
The three previous books (Wellington. Auckland and Christchurch architecture) have proven to be invaluable and have all gone into second editions which is a major achievement for such niche publications.
The Dunedin book follows the outline of the previous books with a brief history of the city, its growth and the development of its architecture. As with previous books Walsh writes clearly about the buildings, placing them clearly with in the history of architecture in New Zealand.
R A Lawton is given considerable space in the book as the architect of the First Church of Otago and Trinity Methodist Church as well as numerous other buildings including Larnach Castle making him an architect of great significant in the Dunedin area. He designed an estimated 46 church buildings, 21 banks, 134 houses, 16 school buildings, 13 hotels, 15 civic and institutional buildings, and 120 commercial and industrial buildings. Virtually all the building were built in the Dunedin area.
Trinity Methodist Church
There are other notable inclusions such as F W Petre who has numerous buildings to his name in the city and he designed three of New Zealand’s cathedrals, each distinguished by a different architectural style: St Joseph’s Cathedral in Dunedin, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Wellington and the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch.
Ted McCoy is one contemporary architect whose work features in the book with several works in the University precinct – the Richardson Building, the Archway Lecture Theatres and University College along with the impressive semicircular apse of St Pauls Cathedral
For the most part these are tours of New Zealand commercial and public buildings but there are a few domestic dwellings as well such Olveston.
In each of the tours we encounter some of the most important architectural gems of the city. So, in the City Centre Tour we encounter the Dunedin Railway Station and the First Church of Otago (“the most impressive of all nineteenth New Zealand churches”).
Toitu. The Josephine Foyer
In the City South tour there is the Warren and Mahoney (with Aukaha) Ōtepoti, Toito Early Settlers Museum (a combination of three architectural styles) and the South City Substation (“one of the best buildings in a city stuffed with Gothic style churches as well as classically ordered banks and Renaissance inspired warehouses.
City West tour features Speight Brewery (Massive without being gaunt, and solid without being drab) and St Dominics Priory (the largest unreinforced mass-concrete building in the Southern Hemisphere) and Olveston (a memento of Dunedin’s Golden Age)
The City Northeast tour includes The University Precinct with its many nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century buildings and the Winter Gardens (first botanic garden building in New Zealand).
The other tours to the east of the city have fewer inclusions but some of the highlights are Larnachs Castle, the Bank of New Zealand in Port Chalmers which was the studio space of Ralph Hotere for many years and the English Gothic style Iona Church overlooking the settlement.
The book emphasises the work of some of the individual architects such as Edmund Anscombe, R A Lawon, Ted McCoy and F W Petre along with the architecture practices of Mandeno & Fraser, Mason, Wales and Miller and White who designed a number of the important building in the city.
There are a couple of instances where major artists are featured with their artworks included as decoration b. These include Jim Allen’s six panel frieze on the Arts Building, Simon Kahn’s dramatic facade on the EBB Hotel and Oliver Gross’s Cenotaph and the frieze on the Hercus building.
John Pule. The first incision I saw I dreamt no more
John Pule
The first incision I saw I dreamt no more
Gow Langsford, Onehunga
Until September 5
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
The catalogue to John Pule’s latest exhibition “The first incision I saw I dreamt no more” has an introductory poem / note by the artist about the exhibition
“my poetry comes from soil
The exertion of ants, the mucus of worms
The last evenings of caterpillars
The froth of centipedes”
It is an acknowledgment that the art works are based on natural forms and his incisions or enquires into the natural world with works such as the eponymous work on paper is like a page from a scientific notebook with drawings of natural forms, the flora and fauna of the artists environment – fish, plants, insects and centipedes. Theses drawings can also be seen as microscopic views and diagrams of biologicals structures.
These references to the natural world and the plant forms that provide shelter also hint at a parallel world of mythological creatures and lands.
Johnh Pule. Tau Po Haaku Tau Aho Haaku
His dramatic approach can be seen in works like “Tau Po Haaku Tau Aho Haaku” ($95,000) where the plant forms which dominate are based on local vegetation but on a larger scale become like a mythological wonderland – somewhere between fantasy and microscopicscans of cellular forms. There are also reference to the natural world with a lake in “Are we able to live here” ($95,000) or a group of Lilliputian scale group of people in “We will always begin here” ($95,000).
The artists work draws on the physical, topographic and historic, merging them, with social, political and personal insights and visions. The work contains much of the artists previous iconography but have a greater immediacy given the artists recent responses to in his ancestral land.
The works are in a sense both a discovery and rediscovery of the land and its mythologies as well as the artists own journeys.
Of his time spent in Niue producing these works he says “I rode my bike each day through the canopy forest from Liku to Alofi, through rain or shine, winds, storm, or calm. The road is bordered with plantations, forests, tracks into the interior. Big blue skies and clouds, shadows of trees stretch across the makatea (limestone) road. Returning to Liku every evening, the sun is warm on my back. These paintings and drawings are about that particular time.”
His works have previously dealt with his growing up in New Zealand, his discovery of traditional Niuean art, and developing his own iconography. This had led to him dealing with wider issues of colonialism, the impact of Christianity as well as the mythology and spirituality of Niue.
With several of the works in the exhibition the artist has created pathways which reach into the foliage much like the trails that that the artist has ridden on his bike but also the pathways which reach back in time. These pathways and journeys can also be seen as metaphors for the artist’s own physical, spiritual and aesthetic journeys.
They are analogous to the songlines of aboriginal art as well as the lines of musical compositions, imagining the way the sounds evolve, carrying a narrative expressing joy. sorrow and wonderment.
The foliage depicted is at once colourful and local as well as surreal and mythological – a portrayal of Pule’s Niue as well as an imagined paradise.
John Pule. Niu Tilani, Takanoa Okalana
Other works such as “We are waiting for them” ($28,000) “Niu Tilani, Takanoa Okalana” ($28,000) feature plans, grids and designs – locating islands, stars, measuring winds and sea currents, all ways of comprehending the environment
David Eggleton provides an essay to the show which provides an overview of the artist’s work with insights into the artist’s work and perceptive observations such as –
“The paintings are transformative in their poetic intensity, maintained by the deft juxtaposition of various intense hues, which, like lava flows, have pooled and puckered into glossy skeins and skins – the oil-based enamels slathered on in virtuoso fashion, or worked around with brush and pen and rag. Here, in these dense, mirage-like gardens, the shining plants have taken on the powers of sorcery or enchantment. They are part of a fantastic botanical order, not necessarily benign, that over-arches the anonymous, small-scale human figures depicted. And we too as spectators bearing witness are enfolded, or perhaps embraced, by the forking tree limbs, the fleshy leaves, the many-seeded climbing vines.”
et al Installation view: 51st Venice Biennale, 2005. Image credit: et al., the fundamental practice, 2005. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased with support of the Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery, 2008. Photograph by Jennifer French.
John Daly-Peoples
et al. the fundamental practice
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Opening 8 August 2026.
Next month the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki will present et al.’s major installation “the fundamental practice” from 8 August 2026, marking the first time the work has been displayed in its entirety in Aotearoa New Zealand.
First exhibited as New Zealand’s official presentation at the 2005 Venice Biennale, the multisensory installation combines five moving ‘autonomous systems’ with computer-generated voices and sounds in a dystopian orchestra. The work forms a layered exploration of belief systems, extremism and its influence on individual freedom and collective life.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Director of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Dr Zara Stanhope says the exhibition provides visitors the opportunity to experience a major work in New Zealand contemporary art history. “the fundamental practice is one of the Gallery’s most significant large-scale collection works. While it became the focus of significant public debate when it was first presented at Venice, many New Zealanders have never had the opportunity to see the work in person, and experience the way it raises curiosity about the ways we understand the world that we live in.”
The artists et al. say the work raises questions about how we navigate the ongoing and intensifying stream of information and media that shapes our lives today: “Can we as humanity endeavor to establish a point of equanimity within the diverse and often oppositional streams of thought we encounter on a daily basis?” and in this landscape, “What truths provide fulfilling meanings to us as a global collective?”
Auckland Art Gallery Senior Curator, Global Contemporary Art Natasha Conland, who curated the work’s original presentation at the Venice Biennale, says the fundamental practice feels more relevant today than it did when it was first shown twenty years ago. New Zealand’s 2005 Venice Biennale presentation to be shown in Aotearoa for the first time
“The work resonates today in a world shaped by widening social divisions, rapidly changing technologies and increasingly fixed belief systems. In this context, the fundamental practice shares diverse perspectives and potential futures, set amongst outmoded machinery. Far from pessimistic, the experience of the work is in many ways speculative and poetic.”
Et al. is among Aotearoa New Zealand’s most celebrated installation artists. Winner of New Zealand’s leading contemporary art award, the 2004 Walters Prize, et al. was the focus of a major retrospective in Melbourne in 2024 and is one of only two New Zealand artists to have exhibited at Art Basel’s prestigious Art Unlimited. The pseudonym “et al.”, meaning “and others”, was adopted in 2000 to acknowledge a range of collaborators and to challenge conventional ideas of authorship and artistic identity.
A 2005 National Business Review of the et installation will be published shortly at http://www.nzartsreview.org
At the end of the April, for four days the Aotearoa Art Fair will once again take over the Viaduct Events Centre on Auckland’s waterfront.
For four days, the Viaduct Events Centre will be New Zealand’s most exciting cultural destination with 60 leading galleries presenting work by more than two hundred artists. The works on display will feature painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, installation art and more. The galleries presenting work are from leading galleries throughout New Zealand as well as major galleries from Australia.
This is the ideal venue for first time collectors as well as those expanding their collections. It is also a chance to hear experts and seasoned collectors talking about art including a session on starting an art collection or art collective featuring Phillida Perry (Kunst Art Group), Christine Fernyhough (Prospect Art Group – New Zealand’s first Art Group), and collector Anna Dickie (Artichoke Art Group).
There are a number of Artists Talks including Yuki Kihara, the New Zealand representative for the 2022 Venice Biennale, talking about the impetus behind her sculpture series ‘Dresstories’, featured at the Aotearoa Art Fair. ‘Dresstories’ references photographs of unknown Sāmoan women taken by the late 19th century NZ colonial photographer Thomas Andrew.
There is also New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based artist Richard Lewer for a first-hand insight into his latest body of work, a compendium of fifty paintings. Offering a snapshot – and social commentary – of our world in 2026, this deeply personal yet collectively resonant body of work, captures the good, the bad and the ugly.
Lissy & Rudi Robinson-Cole will be talking with Nigel Borell talking about their artworks which explore mātauranga Māori and the importance of ancestral knowledge through crocheted woollen sculpture. To date the artists’ largest and most ambitious project has been Wharenui Harikoa (House of Joy), a full-size crocheted meeting house created. They will talk about the boundaries between craft, object art and conventional fine arts at present.
Galleries presenting work by New Zealand and Australian galleries
Sanderson
Simon Kaan, Marama Series IV
Simon Kaan, Marama Series IV, 2026
Ink and oil on board
1250 x 950 (h) mm
$14,000
For Aotearoa Art Fair 2026 Simon Kaan has created a new series of Marama paintings. Made in his studio in an intense period following a close friend passing away the series explores the interplay of light, darkness, and spiritual symbolism, drawing on the Māori concept of the Marama (the moon) as a guiding force that is comforting and ever-present. Through layered textures and subtle tonal shifts, the works evoke a contemplative atmosphere that reflects both the natural rhythms of life and our inner emotional worlds.
Freeman White, Sonata,
Freeman White, Sonata, 2026
Oil on linen
370 x 270 mm
$3750
For the Aotearoa Art Fair 2026 Freeman White has created a new series of dynamic seascape paintings capturing the shifting moods of the ocean. Using layered brushstrokes and subtle colour transitions the works explore the power and tranquillity of the sea. The artworks emphasize the interplay of light and water, creating scenes that feel both animated and harmonious. Several of the paintings began as en plein air studies, described by White as ‘physical embodiments’ of his memories of place, executed in situ to provide a ‘deeper understanding’ of the subject. Some of these studies are included in this body of work.
Parker Contemporary
Melissa J Harvey Pride (from The Guardians series)
Melissa J Harvey Pride (from The Guardians series), 2025 Scuptie stainless steel and concrete Dimensions variable $480 NZD
Developed during a residency at the renowned Morgan Conservatory in the United States, Pride forms part of Melissa J Harvey’s Guardians series, a body of work drawn from recurring dream imagery. In this work, the guardian appears as a watchful presence, reflecting themes of protection, instinct and transformation.
Claudia Husband, Penumbra Drift III, 2025
Claudia Husband Penumbra Drift III, 2025 Lithograph on Awagami Kitikata and Magnani Pescia 38 x 28cm
$750 NZD
Clouds drift across our skies with a quiet presence, evoking peace, joy, awe and sometimes unease. Though untouchable, they hold immense power: absorbing, reflecting and refracting light, they can obscure the sun and moon or amplify their intensity. In this work, cloud like formations become a meditation on the human psyche, drifting in isolation yet inevitably drawn back toward one another.
Alethea Richter Filtered Light #2
Alethea Richter
Filtered Light II, 2024 Woven multilayer silkscreen on cotton rag, custom framed 76cm x 43.6cm $6,000 NZD
Filtered Light #2 forms part of a new body of work by Alethea Richter that investigates how the materiality of hand silk screen printing and hand-woven structures can respond to visual uncertainty in the post digital era. Through layered analogue processes, the work reflects on how images are filtered, interrupted and reassembled through material and touch. Filtered Light II was recognised as the winner of the 2025 Burnie Print Emerging Artist Prize.
Sally Dan-Cuthbert Gallery
Marion Borgelt, Liquid Light: Butterfly
Widely regarded as one of Australia’s most significant and enduring contemporary artists, Marion Borgelt makes her highly anticipated New Zealand debut with new work from three of her most celebrated series: Lunar, Liquid Light, and Strobe. Borgelt’s multidisciplinary practice is distinguished by its sustained investigation into cosmology, optics, time, and the natural world; works that move fluidly across scale, form, and medium, engaging with the fundamental forces that shape our understanding of the universe. Her debut presentation at Aotearoa Art Fair marks an exceptional opportunity to encounter the full breadth and ambition of her evolving vision.
Life cycles and nature are conceptualised in Borgelt’s intriguing, Liquid Light: Butterfly Series. The life cycle and flutter of butterfly wings is referenced through Borgelt’s expert, delicate use of Belgian linen where exquisite colours create an intriguing and mesmerising textile work.
Lisa Reihana Quills
Lisa Reihana is celebrated internationally as an artist, producer, and cultural interlocutor, she presents new images from Maramatanga and Nomads of the Sea, works that continue her groundbreaking inquiry into contemporary photographic and cinematic languages, and the complex intersections of identity, history, place, and community. A major figure in Pacific and indigenous art discourse, Reihana’s practice has earned her an outstanding international reputation. Her iconic film in Pursuit of Venus [infected] will screen at the fair, accompanied by images from the series. With all editions now sold, Artist Proof 1 is the sole remaining primary market opportunity from this landmark work.
Quills is a photograph from Lisa Reihana’s series Nomads of the Sea – a richly layered narrative that follows directly from her acclaimed Venice Biennale work in Pursuit of Venus [infected]. Nomads of the Sea weaves historical fact with fiction to explore the tensions between cultural leadership, spiritual custom and egotistical desire in the face of foreign political challenge in the 1800’s New Zealand, told through the eyes of two formidable female protagonists.
Milford Galleries
Paul Dibble: The Lost Garden (2023)
Paul Dibble: The Lost Garden (2023)
Combining the pathos of loss with the plural optimism of our unofficial national flower, the kōwhai, Paul Dibble’s The Lost Garden is a powerful narrative of loss as well as a celebration of being. Lyrical and fluid, and quite simply beautiful, the extinct huia sits atop the metaphorical circle of life, looking back in judgement of who we think we are and our past behaviours.
Darryn George: Whakamārie #1
Darryn George: Whakamārie #1(2025)
Darryn George seeks to honour and uphold the mana of people whose names are known and those whose quiet influence has shaped the artist’s life. Whakamārie draws inspiration from Barnett Newman – whose monumental fields of colour are punctuated by vertical lines intended to guide the viewer toward the metaphysical or spiritual. Encompassing meanings of calm, comfort, and the restoration of peace across emotional, relational, and spiritual dimensions, Whakamārie #1 responds to Newman’s ambition by imbuing minimalist abstraction with a renewed sense of meaning and presence.
Jane Ussher: Scott’s Hut Cape Evans 4
Jane Ussher: Scott’s Hut Cape Evans 4 (2008)
Long acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s foremost portrait and documentary photographers, Jane Ussher’s internationally acclaimed photographs of Robert Falcon Scott’s historic hut at Cape Evans honour the early Antarctic explorers. Creatively manipulating light, Ussher reveals the minutiae of daily life, the rigours of scientific endeavour, and the profound isolation of Antarctica’s extreme environment, highlighting the human stories embedded within these pioneering journeys.
McLeavey Gallery
Bill Hammond Untitled (Wainui work 1)
Bill Hammond
Untitled (Wainui work 1) and Untitled (Wainui work 2)
Soon after these two works were created, the late William McAloon reviewed a Hammond show at Peter McLeavey Gallery. He described this period as Hammond at “the height of his painterly powers”. Pinned to the wall beside these two panels was a postcard McLeavey wrote to Bill from Golden Bay, writing while surrounded by tūīs, bellbirds and Godwits. Entertained by their splendid dawn chorus.
Zhu Ohmu
Zhu Ohmu
Over the past year in Paris, Taiwanese /New Zealand artist Zhu Ohmu completed a three-month residency using the time to experiment with conceptual idea including her phone tile works, reflecting distance from home.
In gradually, then suddenly, the works explore intimacy, distance, and the traces we leave in our attempts to stay close. The hand-coiled ceramic vessels are based on the finger-smudged impressions left on phone screens.
The hues of blues that colour her were inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, where blue becomes the colour of longing- “the colour of where you are not.”
Ruth Ige
Nigerian artist Ruth Ige who is currently based in Auckland was recognized as the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Rydal Art Award for her work “And you stood in your power” which showcased her unique style using second-hand plywood, oil sticks, dried leaves and acrylic paint.
Her figures are powerfully set within landscapes or colour fields of blue—impressionistic and speculative spaces that remain purposefully undefined. Her palette draws on the deep lineages of Nigerian indigo fabric traditions and the cultural significance of blue more generally for African communities, for whom it symbolises spirituality, protection, and love.
Artis Gallery
Neil Dawson
Neil Dawson, KererūNeil Dawson , Kōtare
We will be presenting three feathers by Neil Dawson at the 2026 fair, a Kōtare and Kererū (both unique pieces) and a Huia feather which is an edition of 5, which is yet to arrive.
Feathers have long been a recurring motif in Neil Dawson’s practice, appearing in works installed globally—from Touchdown near Transmission Gully in Wellington to sites including the Art Gallery of NSW, Sam Neill’s Central Otago winery, and Shanghai’s skyline.
These new works continue that exploration, using the feather as both subject and point of departure. While visually immediate—light, colour, and a sense of effortless movement—they are underpinned by a strong focus on structure. Feathers are highly refined natural forms, engineered for flight and balance, and Dawson draws attention to this underlying complexity.
Precision-cut from aluminium and polycarbonate, the works heighten surface qualities—iridescence, scale, and finely detailed barbs that respond to light and space. Suspended, they appear to hover, reinforcing Dawson’s long-standing interest in weightlessness and spatial illusion. What initially reads as delicate and decorative reveals itself, on closer inspection, as carefully engineered and exacting.
Jordan Barnes
Jordan Barnes
In this series, Jordan Barnes revisits the language of childhood—makeshift forts, draped fabrics, and improvised spaces—as sites of comfort, imagination, and retreat. These fleeting structures become quiet monuments to a time when the boundaries between reality and imagination were fluid.
Barnes approaches nostalgia as something reconstructed rather than fixed. Veiled forms suggest both presence and absence, while shifts between loose and tightly rendered passages draw the viewer inward.
Born in New Plymouth, Barnes is known for his psychologically charged figurative works. A multiple finalist in the Parkin Drawing Prize, he has exhibited widely and was awarded the inaugural NZAAT Artist Grant in 2010.
Josh Olley
Josh Olley
The work depicts a man’s hand endeavouring to squeeze blood from stone — a metaphor for perseverance and tenacity.
“As an artist, the challenge of raising my family through stone sculpture has, at times, felt impossible — yet I feel I have achieved this. This work is an encouragement to others to tackle the seemingly impossible.” – Josh Olley. 2025
The hand is sculpted true to form, embodying strength, tenacity, and determination. The sculpture is carved from a single stone block, ensuring unity of material and form.
Foenander Gallery
Roger Mortimer Te Anau 2026, watercolour, gold dust and acrylic lacquer on canvas on canvas. 1220 x 1120mm $16,000
Roger Mortimer is one of New Zealand’s most significant living artists working in the ‘landscape’ genre. Mortimer has been aptly described as ‘a contemporary visual mythologist’ and is widely recognised for his distinctive use of medieval imagery, juxtaposed with early marine maps of Aotearoa. His work gives a post-modern and post-colonial take on the charting of the local coast lines. Mortimer graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1999. In 2014 he was the Paramount Award Winner in the Wallace Art awards – one of New Zealand’s top art awards. In 2017, a survey exhibition of his work, ‘Dilemma Hill’, was shown in public galleries in Wellington and Auckland.
In 2021 Mortimer had three works included in the landmark exhibition “Oceania Now: Contemporary Art from the Pacific” at Christie’s in Paris – a showcase which represented a unique opportunity for the French and international market to engage with some of the most important and established artists working in New Zealand today. The same year also saw the publishing of: Apocrypha: The Maps of Roger Mortimer – a 160 page monograph with essays examining the last 12 years of Mortimer’s map paintings and weavings. Mortimer’s works feature in a range of significant public, corporate and private collections.
Vipoo Srivilasa
Vipoo Srivilasa, is a celebrated Thai-born ceramicist based in Melbourne
Vipoo Srivilasa Calm Blossom (left) Lucky Blossom (Right), 2026 Ceramic, glaze, cobalt pigment and gold luster Approx: 410 x 230 x 110mm (each) $9,500
Vipoo Srivilasa, is a celebrated Thai-born ceramicist based in Melbourne and this is first time exhibiting in Aotearoa!
His playful and ornate ceramic works explore themes of migration, spirituality and human connection. Vipoo’s new works for the fair are from his ongoing blossom series which incorporates flowers as a metaphor for friendship: “Just as flowers brighten our surroundings and bring beauty to our lives, friendships blossom and grow, adding colour and vibrancy to our experiences. They remind us that, like a well-tended garden, friendships require care and attention, but the rewards are boundless.” The character’s fingers form ‘V’ signs as ‘a universal gesture of peace, friendship and happiness,’ Srivilasa explains “Despite the challenges we face, we can find solace and strength in our connections with others. By including this symbol, I want to convey that everything is okay, and that together, we can create a peaceful and joyful world.”
With career spanning more than 20 years, Vipoo Srivilasa has created intricate and elaborate artworks that reflect his bicultural experience living between Australia and Thailand. Working mostly in ceramic, he celebrates the intersections and overlaps between our cultural, social, philosophical, and environmental ideologies with a mix of humour and reverence, iconography and ornamentalism. His works often explore the dark parts of experience including isolation, loneliness, nostalgia, as well as joy, beauty, and hope in the midst of these struggles. Vipoo has exhibited extensively around the world, including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Saatchi Gallery, London; Ayala Museum, Philippines; Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan; Nanjing Arts Institute, China and the National Gallery of Thailand. His work is held in national and international public collections across the globe including Henan Museum, China; Roopanakar Museum of Fine Arts, India; Craft Council, UK, and the National Gallery of Australia. In 2021, Vipoo was awarded the Ceramic Artist of the Year by the American Ceramic Society for his contribution to the global clay community – and is a nominee for the Legacy Award, at the 2026 Asian Pacific Art Awards -awarded to an individual or arts organisation, that has demonstrated leadership and a long-term commitment to intercultural and international practice.
Vipoo Srivilasa, 2026 Sacred Blossom Ceramic, gold glaze, handmade porcelain flowers and mixed media 390 x 180 x 120mm $9,500
Neal Palmer
Neal Palmer Light the Way Acrylic and Silver Leaf on Aluminium Panels 1850 x 1850mm
Formally Neal Palmer’s large Kauri painting towers over the viewer and the gilded silver background gives the sensory impression of the dappled light shining through the branches. The painting depicts Tāne Mahuta, and while this first impression of scale and perhaps the protection of its canopy are appropriate – the work also seeks to draw attention to Aotearoa’s complex ecology under stress. With very few of these giant trees left after most of the forests were felled, the remaining Kauri are now threatened by Kauri Dieback Disease which has spread widely and kills quickly.
Dieback spreads through the soil infecting trees via their roots. There’s a lot going on under the surface that we need to understand before it’s too late.
A full-time artist since 1999, Neal Palmer has had 30 solo shows alongside participating in group shows and events at Artspace, Rotorua Museum, Hastings City Art Gallery, Artists in Eden and the Beijing and Los Angeles Biennial Art Invitationals. Palmer has been a finalist in the Molly Morpeth, Margaret Stoddart, Estuary Art & Ecology and the Wallace Art Awards and was an inaugural artist for the Karekare House residency and the most recent Artist in Residence at the Auckland Botanic Gardens (2022 – 2023_.
Palmer’s painting practice revolves around exploring his natural environment and its visual language. “I have discovered subjects that can evoke strong emotional responses. I have been consistently interested in blending visual languages, and in exploring how the languages of colour, texture, pattern, and abstract forms can inform and cross-reference each other. One focus has been to develop work that uses the illusion of a photographic ‘depth of field’ to allow images to slip in and out of pictorialism and abstraction through shifting the viewer’s conscious reactions to colour, composition, and form.”
Born in London, Palmer gained a Bachelor of Fine Art (hons) from Nottingham Trent University, where the work of his contemporaries Tim Noble and Sue Webster remain influential to this day. He moved to Aotearoa in the late 90’s, coming to terms with the natural environment of his new home, the artist engaged in painting again, to great success, finding a strong affinity and emotional nostalgic response from the native fauna. Allowing his work to slip in and out of pictorialism and abstract flatness; creating a tension between the paintings surface and the illusion of space. Aspiring for his work to be relational “on as many levels as possible” and passion for quality “mark-making that lifts the painting beyond the material world” is what drives this artist.
Nau Mai, Hardwood (Eucalypt, Jarrah) , Oil, Ngāi Tahu Pounamu & Woven KakahuDimensions Vary (approx: H2500 W240 x D 130mm each)$6,000 (each)
Anton Forde
Anton Forde (Taranaki, Gaeltacht, Gaelic, English) began his carving journey at the age of 18, studying under renowned sculptors Paul Dibble, Gary Whiting, and Paul Hansen, before continuing his education with Professor Robert Jahnke at Massey University’s Māori Visual Arts Programme, Toioho ki Āpiti. Under Professor Jahnke’s guidance, Anton earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Māori Visual Arts with Distinction, followed by a Masters in Māori Visual Arts with First Class Honours.
Anton Forde’s carved timber pou stand watch like warriors awaiting in haka, this formation represents protection in standing together, and suggests a way forward in which one is guided by the ancestors of the past/
The artist, drawing upon his knowledge and connections, offers this position as one we might assume while navigating the increasingly uncertain times of climate change, from which we might conceive of ourselves as kaitiaki or guardians of the land rather than as its possessor.
His stately figures are at once a dominating and sheltering presence – in front of the,, we might take measure of our smallness in relation to the majesty of nature, of time, and of the many generations of people to have come before and who will come after.
Forde’s artistic journey has taken him from Taranaki to Èire/Ireland, where he immersed himself in ancient art forms and themes. He now resides on Waiheke Island, a place that inspires much of his work. Over the past twelve years, Forde has exhibited both solo and in group exhibitions across Aotearoa/New Zealand, Èire/Ireland, and San Francisco, with a focus on sculpture and installation. His works are held in both public and private collections, locally and internationally. Central to Anton Forde’s practice is the exploration of our connection to the land, the majesty of nature, indigenous cultures, and the urgent effects of climate change. His works aim to inspire a deeper understanding and respect for our environment, with a focus on protecting the whenua (land) and moana (oceans) for future generations.
As Forde puts it: “With these works, my hope is to bring attention to the need for us to unify to protect Te Ao / our world. I hope these works connect us to our whenua and moana in a way that drives us to act, to protect them.”
Each of Forde’s pieces strives to make both an aesthetic and social statement, inviting viewers to reflect on their role in the ongoing dialogue around conservation and cultural preservation.
The sculpture on show at the Auckland Art Fair is always one of the highlights of the show as it is often difficult to access and view large scale sculpture. This year the works on show have been expanding significantly with 24 large-scale works by 18 artists installed across the Art Fair precinct, which extends from the area outside the Events Centre to locations around the Viaduct Basin.
The trail will feature leading Aotearoa artists and major international names, along with strong Māori and Pacific representatives.
The artists include Bernar Venet, Braddon Snape, James Rodgers, Hye Rim Lee, Reuben Paterson, Paul Dibble, Caitlen Devoy, Peata Larkin, Martin Creed, a floating work by Gregor Kregar, and a shimmering installation by Lisa Reihana.
Bernar Venet’s Indeterminate Line is a steel form where bending and twisting are balanced with chance. Loops coil and unravel, reflecting the artists decades-long exploration of lines, geometry, and the interplay of order, chaos, and material presence.
David McCracken
In his 2026 work, the weathered corten steel operates as both object and aperture reflecting David McCracken’s enduring interest in balance, repetition, and the tension between solidity and illusion.
He creates forms that appear to extend beyond their physical limits, drawing the viewer into a quiet contemplation of the processes involved.
Ben Pearce
ARLOS, silk & RYOS, Ben Pearce’s large-scale sculpture celebrates nature, its strength, and its delicate balance. The boulder-like sections of his towering forms seem tethered to the firmament yet soar into the air like the supports of some natural colonnade. figurative aspects and character emerge giving them a sense of animated presence. Shapes and concepts emerge and disappear as the forms interact with the space around them.
Paul Dibble
Paul Dibble’s Healing a Busy World acknowledges the return of native birds into the built environments of our cities. His flattened volume, references to building outlines and modern architecture interspersed by rectangular windows filled with light and hope. We also see for the first time a new rich green patina and the emblematic, symbolic sticks of healing kawakawa reclaiming the city.
Reuben Paterson
Reuben Paterson’s Koro is a sculptural work from 2023. Crafted from cast aluminium, painted with automotive lacquer, and encrusted with glass crystals, it showcases Paterson’s ability to create works across a diverse range of media.
Through a diverse range of media he creates works which are visually hypnotic and conceptually nuanced.
Hye Rim Lee
Hye Rim Lee’s artistic practice navigates the fluid threshold between the real and the virtual, translating digital imagination into tangible form. Gold Rose emerges from her iconic 3D animation series White Rose, where virtual fantasies are reborn through material transformation. In this sculptural work, Lee transforms glass — a medium rooted in her digital world — to explore its dual nature: hard yet fragile, liquid yet solid, transparent yet opaque, in her cast Gold Rose.
Ngaroma Riley
Ngaroma Riley is an artist of Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, and Pākehā descent. She began her carving journey making Buddhist statues while working in Japan. Her work centres on Māori narratives, with a focus on retelling whānau, hapū and iwi stories through a wahine Māori lens.
Her work Kapahaka Queens is a shout out to all the aspiring performers — the ones who live and breathe haka, who learn their words on the bus, sing their waiata in the shower, practise their pukana in the mirror and who give their heart and soul to every performance.
Sione Faletau
Inspired by the Waitematā Harbour, Sione Faletau recorded its sounds and translated their frequencies into kupesi patterns. Lalava ke he Uho – Connected to the Essence is formed through intersecting lines, the sculpture speaks to the DNA strand, symbolising the harbour’s life-giving essence. Lalava – meaning to bind – connects sound, place and identity into a site-specific expression of the harbour’s mauri. This is the first time Faletau has worked on a large-scale sculpture with his earlier works focused on digital and video works.
Image credit: Edith Amituanai, Vaimoe (video still), 2024. Digital video, sound. Cinematographer: Ralph Brown. Photo credit: Ralph Brown
Held every three years, the Walters Prize is widely regarded as Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prestigious award for contemporary art. Over its 24-year history, the prize has helped elevate contemporary New Zealand art, both nationally and internationally. Conceived as a platform to showcase excellence in the visual arts, it has bolstered careers, stimulated critical debate and enriched the cultural life of Tāmaki Makaurau and wider New Zealand.
Four artists have been selected by an independent jury for works exhibited between February 2023 and February 2026.
In making their selection, the jury made the following comments: “These artists have made an outstanding contribution to contemporary art in Aotearoa over the last three years, a period marked by political unrest, escalating conflicts, and environmental devastation. Rather than amplifying this turbulence through spectacle, they each respond to the disorientation of our times by turning an acute attention toward local and personal narratives, while expanding the material and conceptual possibilities of their practices.”
Edith Amituanai (born 1980, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) is a New Zealand-born Samoan lens-based artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Amituanai was nominated for Vaimoe, 2024, first exhibited in Edith Amituanai and Sione Tuívailala Monū: Toloa Tales, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna Waiwhetū, 2024, which demonstrates the artist’s recent shift into moving image while maintaining the gracious, lucid enquiry that has defined her practice over the last two decades. Vaimoe gently pushes against conventional ideals of home and belonging, exploring the ways relationships are upheld and maintained through proximity and distance, while acknowledging the challenges of change, disconnection, and communication.
Image credit: Richard Frater, Nicky’s conversion (video still), 2025. HD video, colour, sound. Lett Thomas, Auckland. Image supplied by the artist
Richard Frater (born 1984, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington) lives and works in Berlin. Frater was nominated for Nicky’s conversion, 2024, first exhibited at Klosterruine Berlin, 2024 and Lett Thomas, Auckland, 2025, a work that tenderly records the rehearsal of a sermon by an Anglican priest, articulating the challenges of reconciling the interior self with the structures through which we have come to understand the exterior world. With dignity and grace, the work describes a changing gender identity and offers a path through the Anglican tradition towards acceptance and love of ourselves and others.
Image credit: Ammon Ngakuru, Three Scenes (installation detail), 2025. Mixed media sculptural installation. Commissioned by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, with support from the Chartwell Trust and the Contemporary Benefactors of the Auckland Art Gallery, 2025.
Ammon Ngakuru (born 1993, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Ngakuru was nominated for Three Scenes, commissioned for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2025, a work that responds to the Gallery’s outdoor terrace and its site on Albert Park with an elegant restraint characteristic of his practice. Implicating the audience in its field of sculptural references, the work establishes a stage on which uncertain interpretation is acted out.
Image credit: Sorawit Songsataya, Ranad detail from the exhibition Fibrous Soul, 2024. Taranaki andesite, Ōamaru limestone, onyx, dried plant. Taranaki andesite carving by Donald Buglass. Photo courtesy of the artist and Govett- Brewster Art Gallery
Sorawit Songsataya (born 1986, Chiang Mai, Thailand) is a Thai-New Zealand artist currently based in Bangkok. Songsataya was nominated for the exhibition Fibrous Soul, presented at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2024, for its exploration of processes of accumulation, regeneration and transformation. Across moving image and sculpture, and including work made by the late weaver and kaitiaki of Te Niho o Te Ātiawa Maata Wharehoka, Fibrous Soul draws together organic and artificial materials, and customary and contemporary practices, to elucidate slippages between human and more-than-human worlds and the possibility of communication across them.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Director of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Dr Zara Stanhope says, “It has been a privilege to begin my term as Director of the Gallery welcoming in the jurors and artists for the 2027 Walters Prize. Their selection is a poignant reminder of the breadth and range of art across Aotearoa New Zealand and of the activity currently shaping the visual arts as a healthy and vital part of the cultural sector.”
The finalists are invited to present new work or their nominated work at the Gallery in a public exhibition, scheduled to open in March 2027.
Auckland Art Gallery’s Senior Curator, Global Contemporary Art, Natasha Conland, who works closely with the artists to realise the prize exhibition and says, “These finalists express materially rich works with unique, often humorous and intellectually rewarding content. It’s not surprising that they each carry a large following of supporters who are looking to ask new questions of art, and to explore its potential,” says Conland.
Judith (Susan Bullock) and Bluebeards (Lester Lynch) Image: Thomas Hamill
Bluebeards Castle
By Bela Bartok
NZ Opera & Auckland Arts Festival
Aotea Centre
March 13th & 14th
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
In Bela Bartok’s original staging of Bluebeards Castle, the newlywed Judith enters her husband’s dark, foreboding castle where she is faced with seven locked doors that she is forbidden to open. In this version by Daisy Evans, it is a single trunk which holds the memories of the couples past lives which Bluebeard remembers while Judith herself seems to become lost to him.
For this production director Daisy Evens created a new Judith who is somewhere between an older woman with dementia and a woman facing her own psychological breakdown and who along with her husband can be seen as displaying the Freudian concepts of sexual trauma.
The castle can be seen as symbolic of Bluebeard’s soul; a dark mind filled with secrets that threaten to reveal his true nature. The opera itself can be seen as an allegory for the loneliness of the human soul, the impossibility of truly knowing another person, or the conflict between rational and emotional.
Bartok was writing the opera at the same time that Freud was engaged in studies into psychoanalysis and elements of this have seeped into Bartok’s thinking which aligns with Freud’s theories of exploring the unconscious mind, hidden sexual desires, and psychological trauma.
Bluebeards Castle like other Symbolist art works, replaced traditional dramatic narratives with dark, subjective internal journeys, mirroring the Freudian focus on repressed emotions and dreams.
Despite Bluebeards protests she removes the symbolic items from the chest and in doing so she discovers events from Bluebeards past, events she needs to recognise if she is to fully understand him. He also needs to acknowledge these events if they are to be a truly understanding, loving couple.
In opening the chest for the seventh time she discovers the three women of his past, one found in the morning, one at noon and one at sunset, Then with Judith, his fourth, the bride he found at night, having fully understood her husband she joins the women leaving Bluebeard in perpetual darkness.
The seven memories in the trunk contain the relics of the couples past that Lester Lynch’s Bluebeard remembers with joy and anguish, while Susan Bullock’s Judith emotionally engages with her former self, as lover, bride and mother.
References are made throughout the opera about the power of light to overcome darkness and symbolic of this the stage was studded with two dozen domestic lamps which flickered on and off at various points.
Like the story of Bluebeards Castle, the music is mysterious and riveting, providing a background soundscape which seems to continually shift as the various events of the opera are revealed.
Throughout the work there were sequences where the music provided particularly unsettling sounds, while there were other times when the orchestra was able to symbolise the idea of light flooding into the darkness of the castle. There were some exquisite passages particularly the blaring drama of the organ which was like a palpable force and the swelling of the strumming harps.
It was the emotional richness provided by the two singers which helped maintain the tension along with their creation of character though their acting. Bullock displayed a voice of amazing power while Lynch plumbed great depths as he revealed his inner thoughts.
This production was a stunning display of acting and singing along with an inspiring performance by the Auckland Philharmonia under the direction of conductor Brad Cohen.
This week you can experience Helios, a breathtaking, larger-than-life artwork created by renowned UK artist Luke Jerram. Arriving in New Zealand for the first time, Helios is both a scientific wonder and a multi-sensory artwork, offering a rare opportunity to visualise the beauty and complexity of our closest star.
The globe measures six metres in diameter and was created at a scale of 1:230 million, it is constructed from approximately 400,000 images of the Sun’s surface. These images combine photography by astrophotographer Dr Stuart Green with data from NASA solar observations. Internally lit, this spherical installation allows for a safe yet awe-inspiring examination of the Sun’s extraordinarily detailed surface, revealing features such as sunspots, spicules, and filaments.
Named after the ancient Greek and Roman sun god – symbolic of time and life. Helios blends real solar imagery with animated lighting accompanied with an immersive surround-sound composition by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson, creating a powerful and unforgettable experience.
Luke Jerram’s multidisciplinary arts practice involves the creation of sculptures, installations and live artworks. Living in the UK, but working internationally, Jerram creates art projects which excite and inspire people around the world.
One of his recent projects Echo Wood is a collaboration between the artist and charity Avon Needs Trees It is an extensive new artwork made from 365 living trees.
The native trees will slowly grow into a vast 110-metre-wide design. Blossoming at different times of year, pathways and avenues will be created to guide visitors on a journey through the forest towards a central circular gathering space, formed from 12 English oak trees. Echo Wood will take a century to fully emerge – but will endure for generations.
Co-commissioned by National Trust, Cork Midsummer Festival, Liverpool Cathedral, Old Royal Naval College and University College London.
Auckland Theatre Company and Auckland Arts Festival
Until March 22
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Set in the 1960s, Waiora explores the dynamics of a Māori family – John (Regan Taylor), Sue (Erina Daniels), Amiria (Rongopai Tickell), Rongo (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne) and Boyboy (Te Mihi Potae) – who have moved away from their East5 Cape marae looking to create a new life and new opportunities for the adults and children in a South Island mill town. They are in search of the Kiwi dream but have uprooted themselves from Waiora, their homeland.
The tensions between the older generation and the youthful members of the family are seen early on with patriarch John singing O Sole Mio while Amiria and her teacher friend Louise are singing a Beatles song. It’s a scene which leads to the development of disagreement on a range of issues.
Alongside the generational divide we discover separations within the family itself which has an estranged son working in the big city and another son, Boyboy who has been suspended from school.
A major theme revolves around the success of highly regarded John at the mill and his expectation of becoming foreman. This notion of Māori success in industry and business is juxtaposed with the lives of the two privileged Pakeha in the play. Louise, a teacher from a wealthy family and Steve, the mill owner.
Much of the play deals with issues related to colonialism, dislocation from the land, language and the spiritual dimension. These are issues which are still important for Māori and pakeha. Merely confronting these issues is not a solution, how much compromise, concession and negotiation must occur.
Cutting across the stage is a bridge by which all the characters must move. It acts as a potent symbol of the bridge needed to solve the problems of racism and opportunity in New Zealand.
Central to the play is the acting of Regan Taylor as John. He articulates all the aspirations and objectives of the family as well as the problems of not recognising some of the contemporary social issues. Some of his monologues were brilliant, drawing various themes together, conveying the personal, historic and spiritual.
While the play appears ot be rooted in the day-to-day life of the family we become aware of another dimension – wairuatanga or the spiritual life. Several white clad figures move in and around the family seemingly part of everyday but also existing as European equivalents of guardian angels or the Greek mythological figures who bridge the gap between the immortal and mortal.
The play has a rich musical landscape created by Hone Hurihanganui and Maarire Brunning-Kouka consisted of waiata, haka and contemporary sounds.
The entire cast work well together creating a witty, emotional and honest approach to the issues as they each show how they are caught up in an historic, social, and spiritual bind which offers few solutions – that is for the audience to come to terms with.
x 950 (h) mm
New Zealand Arts Review 