Horizons: Emerging Artist Sector
PRESENTED BY
Presented by Chapman Tripp, Horizons is a highlights new-generation and unrepresented artists from across Aotearoa and the Pacific. Horizons 2026 features four booths curated by Dan Ahwa, Matthew Galloway, Cheron Hassett and Becky Hemus — and is facilitated by Becky Hemus, publisher and editor-in-chief of Current art magazine.
“For Horizons, I wanted to share some of the ideas that I hear artists speaking about — what they see as being influential or innovative within their cohort. Each of the booths is centred around the proposition, What art do you see defining the moment of now, what feels prescient to you?”, Curator, Becky Hemus
Curated by Becky Hemus
Featuring Nadia Marychurch
He Haerenga Whenua references the gathering journeys that sit at the heart of Marychurch’s practice. Walking the shores of Matakana Island, she searches for the materials that will become part of the work — clay, sand, driftwood, and fibre — guided by intuition, memory, and tohu from the land and her tīpuna.
In this new body of work, repurposed woollen blankets are coated with whenua and stitched with muka into reimagined tukutuku patterns that speak to pathways of learning, ascent, and whānau. Some works are suspended from driftwood gathered along the shoreline, carrying the rhythms of tide and wind. Others are framed within hand-formed uku — earth shaped and fired from Matakana clay — grounding the works both physically and conceptually in the land from which they emerge.
Nadia Marychurch (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Raukawa)
Nadia Marychurch works with whenua to explore whakapapa as something living, layered and held in material form. Drawing from her tūrangawaewae of Matakana Island, she gathers white uku, golden uku and iron-rich black sand carried from nearby Tuhua (Mayor Island), returning these materials to the studio through traditional processing and pit firing. She is a recent graduate of Whitecliffe.
Image credit: Felix Jackson for Current Art Magazine
Curated by Chevron Hassett
Featuring artists Jimmy Ma’ia’i, Lolani Dalosa, Harrison Freeth, Chevron Hassett
SPADES brings together four exciting emerging artists — Harrison Freeth, Jimmy Maai’i, and Lolani Da Sosa. The booth transforms into a pop-up Hāngī-inspired fundraiser, offering limited-edition packs that bundle one work from each artist into a single collectible set. With daily raffle draws and exclusive prizes, SPADES explores the intersections of exchange, value, and cultural commodity, turning art collecting into a participatory experience. Only a set number in stock — get ’em while they’re hot.
Curated by Matthew Galloway
Featuring Ed Ritchie and Megan Brady
Support Play brings together the practices of Ed Ritchie and Megan Brady to form a dialogue about the precarious properties of both natural and artificial materials.
Ritchie’s work begins with the unique storage properties of various organic materials like burl wood, peat moss and seed encasings — using them to fabricate small-scale models of everyday infrastructure; commenting on the impulse to contain and preserve.
Meanwhile, Brady removes warp and weft threads from European Flax Linen using a technique inherited from her Nan, creating apertures through subtraction. The works meditate on tightly bound systems — colonial structures, naming conventions, whakapapa — and gently loosen them.
In both bodies of work, careful attention is paid to support systems and modes of presentation, again making these considerations integral to the work itself, and the connections and divergences between the two practices reflect a sustained history of collaboration and shared involvement in the contemporary art scene in Ōtepoti, Dunedin.
Ed Ritchie
Ed Ritchie’s practice largely involves site considered installation and sculpture. His work centres around specific material properties, their interactions with environments and the ways in which we try and understand the invisible infrastructures that operate around us.
Megan Brady (Kāi Tahu – Ngāi Tūāhuriri, Pākehā)
Ōtautahi-based artist Megan Brady works across installation, textiles, and site-responsive practice to explore how we navigate and connect with place. Her works often begin with deep engagement in whenua, whakapapa, and family archives, tracing the rhythms and materials that shape our environments. Through sensory, spatial installations, Brady creates contemplative spaces for reflection and reconnection.
