Alumni Year: 2016

Francis McWhannell is a writer and exhibition-maker from Aotearoa New Zealand, currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Museums and Cultural Heritage and a Master of Arts in Art History (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau. He is curator of the Fletcher Trust Collection, a major private collection of Aotearoa art founded in 1962, and curatorial adviser to the dealer gallery Visions. He is a passionate advocate for the arts in general and early-career artists from Aotearoa in particular. He was a judge of the Aspiring Art Prize in 2019 and the Eden Arts Art Schools Award in 2019 and 2020.

Francis has written for various arts and culture magazines and websites, including Art Collector (Australia), Art New Zealand, Art News New Zealand, Index, and The Spinoff. He contributes regularly to The Pantograph Punch, where he was Visual Arts Editor from 2016 to 2017. He has written essays for exhibitions at public and commercial galleries, including Painting: a transitive space (ST PAUL St Gallery Three, 2016) and Denys Watkins: Dynamo Hum (Gus Fisher Gallery, 2017). He is co-author of two books on historical photography, Bitter fruit: Australian photographs to 1963 (Michael Graham-Stewart, 2017) and Broad sunlight: Early West African photography (2020).

His exhibitions include Postcards from Papatoetoe (Old Papatoetoe mall, 2016), Fluid structures: Watercolour group show (Parlour Projects, 2017), and Projects 2019: Whanaungatanga (Auckland Art Fair, 2019). He is presently working on a group show of photographs with Chris Corson-Scott, Undercurrents: reimagining New Zealand, to be accompanied by a substantial publication.

In December 2020, Simon Rees will have lived the majority of his life outside of New Zealand. Nevertheless, Rees spent many productive and rewarding years studying and working in NZ; including the time he was associated with the Auckland Art Fair as the director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery who inaugurated the Len Lye Centre.  Best known internationally for his work in Northern and Eastern Europe at the CAC, Vilnius, he has returned to working in those geo-political spaces as the artistic director of Cosmoscow, the international art fair in Russia.

Jarrod Rawlins (Curator, MONA, Hobart) was a co-curator of Projects 2016.

Cerith Wyn Evans was born in Llanelli, Wales in 1958. Wyn Evans began his career as a film maker, producing short experimental films in the late 1970s. Since the 1990s his work has been characterised by its focus on language and its articulation in space through the nuances of perception, as well as a precise conceptual clarity. Wyn Evans installations work like a catalyst: a reservoir of possible meanings that can unravel many discursive journeys. His work has a highly refined aesthetic that is often informed by his magpie like approach to influences from film, music, literature and philosophy, which shape and colour his practice. Cerith Wyn Evans lives and works in London.

Bronwyn Holloway-Smith (Pākehā) is an award-winning artist and author based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her practice weaves together interests in national identity, public art, new technologies, and the power dynamics controlling knowledge and information. Recent works have examined how shifts in technology impact on the creation and preservation of culture, and how modern-day copying processes can be used to digitally recover or preserve pieces of lost or forgotten cultural items.

She is currently Co-Director of Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand: a research initiative based at Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University Wellington, that seeks to recover Aotearoa New Zealand’s Public Art Heritage, one work at a time. Recent projects and publications include Bledisloe Bebop (Auckland Live Digital Stage, Aotea Square, 2020), The Southern Cross Cable: A Tour (City Gallery Wellington, 2018), WANTED: The search for the modernist murals of E. Mervyn Taylor (Massey Press, 2018), and Te Ika-a-Akoranga (various locations, 2014-2019).

She holds a PhD (Fine Arts) from Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University Wellington and a scuba diving qualification (with deep-dive specialty) which she gained in order to hold a major trans-national internet cable. In 2009 she was named as one of the 25 Most Powerful People in Technology by the New Zealand National Business Review due to her work in the Copyright field, in which she continues to dabble. She has completed numerous commissions and her work has been shown in Australia, Japan, Germany, the US, throughout Aotearoa, and mid-air as part of Air New Zealand’s in-flight entertainment programme (Destination Pioneer City, 2012).

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