Category: Conversations

In this conversation with Nadine Rubin Nathan for Vitrine, Areez Katki speaks to repair, inheritance and the pull of London ahead of their Gasworks residency.

Read the full interview on Vitrine.

Earlier in the year, at Aotearoa Art Fair in Auckland, Tim Melville gallery dedicated the first two days to a solo exhibition of hand-embroidered artworks by Areez Katki created on textile fragments given to the artist and former ordained Zoroastrian priest by his family’s Parsi tailor in Mumbai, India. The embroidery works, mounted painting-style on the walls of the booth, were first shown in 2025 in Innsbruck, Austria, at the Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol.

Born in Mumbai in 1989 and raised in East Auckland from age 12, Katki studied Art History and English at the University of Auckland and Creative Writing at Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. They returned in 2018 to their ancestral Parsi home in Mumbai, a shift that became a catalyst for wider research into Zoroastrian histories and sites across Gujarat, Iran and Azerbaijan. The Parsi community, an ancient ethnominority who follow the Zoroastrian faith, were persecuted after the Islamisation of Persia in the eighth century and many, including Katki’s ancestors, fled to India.

Katki’s practice explores the complicated and often queer contours of migrant identity, bringing ancient traditions and personal archives into conversation with the present. The past two years in Berlin, initially as the recipient of the 2024/25 CNZ Berlin Residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, has seen Katki begin to develop an experimental novel, a publication, a performance-based ritual, and a new moving-image work. During their time at Gasworks, Katki will continue the research and development for this new performance and moving-image work, ‘An Internal Dissenter Who Remains in Relation’.

Areez Katki. ‘How to puncture the sky and hear the stones sing’ (install view). Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, DE), 2025. Photograph: Julian Blum.

Vitrine: Your practice is built around stitching, mending and layering. Do you think repair is an artistic act, a political act, or a spiritual one?

Areez Katki: I feel like each time I’m confronted with the subject of repair I have slightly varied responses. Today, repair to me looks a bit more like resistance. Perhaps this indicates that it is currently more motivated by political intentions? If you had asked me this at another juncture, I might’ve responded differently. Ideally the act of repair, whatever its objectives, has an outcome that aids our understandings around the materiality of loss.

Vitrine: Can you share an example?

AK: My grandmother used to cover the furnishings in her flat (the one I now use as my studio in Mumbai) with large bolts of slubby khadi cloth whenever she left for extended periods of time. For a recent work titled ‘She took a long bath (after Jacques de Morgan)’, 2025, I imagined one of these bolts as a ground for interconnective ancestral material—accrued, gathered, hoarded—utilised as a means of understanding (our) histories against colonial theft. There emerged an intimacy but also an immediacy to this mode of fabular storytelling. I felt compelled to contextualise my grandmother’s dust cloth against the recorded evidence of a bronze bathtub-shaped coffin in Susa during the late-Achaemenid period. The coffin contained the remains of an elderly female with a broken hip. She was surrounded by objects of personal significance: ceramic vessels, gold, silver, faïence and bronze treasures. The recorded dimensions of the skeleton bore physical similarities to my grandmother’s, who also sustained a fractured hip in her later years. A French archaeologist named Jacques de Morgan documented this gravesite in 1905, and published a small watercolour rendering of it alongside a report of his excavations of Achaemenid Susa, in ‘Mémoires de la Délegation en Perse’ (Vol. 8, Plate 2), titled Découverte d’une sépulture achéménide à Suse. While the original painting, as well as the treasures and remains, are still held in the collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, I tried to approach theft not through the fantasy of recovery, but as a way of understanding loss. A way to reclaim ephemera on our own terms: by re-drawing in embroidered thread, on a much larger scale than the original painting, how the confines within which ancestral residues and their earthly treasures continue to rest in the imaginations of their descendants. For me, this becomes a form of repair: tethering a familial history across geographies and generations.

Areez Katki. ‘She took a long bath (after Jacques de Morgan)’, 2025. (install view). Cotton thread hand embroidery, found textile. 1885mm H x 720mm W. Exhibited in ‘The Daughters’ Trilogy Chapter II: COMMUNION’ at TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol (Innsbruck AT), 2025. Photograph: Günter Kresser.

Vitrine: Contemporary art is often preoccupied with the language of identity. Your work seems interested in inheritance instead. Are those the same thing?

Areez Katki: Identity and inheritance are often enmeshed, but I believe them to be distinct in their ultimate pursuits and pathways. The way I see it, preoccupations with identity are often rooted in a desire to reconcile the self against a global context, imagined as a fractured subject, whether through geopolitical frameworks or instances of biographical rupture. These languages may not directly cite psychoanalysis, but they can nonetheless steer toward methodologies of understanding in which the self begins to resemble a model proffered by Western schools of thought.

Inheritance, as an alternative pathway, is coded with similar desires— yet I feel like it opens this conversation up to paradigms that resist emphasising a reconciliatory outcome for an individual. I find it far more compelling to frame phenomena through plurality, interpreted and reinterpreted across generations in cyclical modes of understanding and transmitted knowledge systems. In doing so, the self is dwarfed by a constellation of affective inheritances that we may read, follow through annals, and commune with on a deeper level. Inheritance allows us to act as receptors through which ancestral voices may emanate and subsequently flow outward, to the next generation—who will invariably add their own layers of interpretation and experience onto a collective tapestry.

Ultimately, I think it could be about two distinct pedagogical approaches: one that centres the individual, another that situates the individual within a continuum.

Vitrine: Do you think queer artists from formerly colonised cultures face a particular pressure to reconcile sexual identity, cultural inheritance and Western ideas of liberation?

AK: Certainly. I think part of the pressure comes from the assumption that queerness must be positioned against cultural inheritance, particularly when that inheritance is imagined through the lens of heteronormativity. For queer people from formerly colonised cultures, Western narratives of liberation can sometimes arrive as another framework through which we are asked to understand ourselves: first by locating ourselves against the supposedly conservative traditions we inherit, and then by measuring our liberation against Western models of sexual and gender freedom.

I’m more interested in what happens when inheritance isn’t treated as a fixed thing that must either be defended or escaped, but as an archive that can be reinterpreted. A queer body can inherit, alter, contradict and transmit simultaneously.

Vitrine: Indigenous knowledge and textile traditions were routinely devalued. Do you think reclaiming these practices is inherently political, or can that argument itself become reductive?

AK: It might be reductive if such claims pursued political motivations alone as their objective. I think it all comes back to pedagogy for me, and how such traditions might be sustained in order for a Global Majority audience to self-reference their own histories, on their own terms. This gets more complicated when an audience demands explanations in order for such work to feel more intimately understood or ‘readable’. Must everything be translated for the dominant culture before it is allowed to count as knowledge? It might be helpful if these conversations happened in places unencumbered by systems, dare I say, where authorship is still controlled by those who continue to occupy positions of institutional power. I think here of Gayatri Spivak’s writing on epistemic violence: the problem of what happens when knowledge is only sanctioned legitimacy once it becomes legible within the structures of those already authorised to produce it.

Left: Areez Katki. Photograph: Rick Burger. Right: Areez Katki. (extra)ordinary affects, 2024 – 2025. (install view). Cotton thread hand embroidery, found textiles, cotton twine, pinewood scaffolding. Exhibited in ‘The Daughters’ Trilogy Chapter II: COMMUNION’ at TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol (Innsbruck AT), 2025. Photograph: Günter Kresser.

Vitrine: The Gasworks residency has a particular history of bringing artists from outside Europe into dialogue with London’s contemporary art world. What, if anything, do you want to resist about the way Londoners might read your work?

AK: Perhaps I’d resist the comfortable option of explaining my work and its objectives? I’d like very much to explore the expansive possibilities of my role as a descendent of Zoroastrian Maji, a knowledge-holder and storyteller, whose position isn’t perceived as an ethnographic spectacle but rather one that is able to transmute beyond its formerly parochial and patriarchal iterations.

At the same time, I think it’s kind of fun to play with the expectations of certain audiences, and dialogue with the why and where of those assumptions and desires: how they arose, or why they think it’s relevant to discuss these details—those emphasised expectations to justify one’s work that are placed upon non-european practices. If there’s fragility to be encountered in those conversations, I say pass the popcorn.

Areez Katki. ‘An Internal Dissenter Who Remains in Relation, 2025’ – ongoing. Film still preview from multi-channel digital video (in development).

Vitrine: The residency is deliberately self-directed. What are you hoping it will unsettle in your practice?

AK: At this point, I’d rather stay observant, curious and open to what London might unsettle in me. I imagine there might be ways of developing a deeper understanding of the UK’s Parsi-Irani diaspora and (our) global positionality. I’d like to find ways to engage in discussions around an entanglement of subjects—migration histories, convenient erasures, colonial complicity—as ways to trouble, perhaps unsettle, some of these complex histories and how they might be critically approached today. I also have family in London, a nephew and niece whom I’d love to sit in conversations with, and learn more about their relationships with being Kiwi, British, Indian, Parsi.

Vitrine: In London, do you imagine yourself looking at the city or looking back at it?

AK: Probably both, although I suspect looking at London will inevitably become a way of looking back. Because London is not a neutral geography: it is an imperial archive. I don’t think one can look at London without wondering what London has looked at. I’d like to walk my nephew through Room 52 in the British Museum, and see his reflection against the glass vitrines containing objects once used by our ancestors. He’ll probably ask, “How did they get here?” — and perhaps I’ll respond, “How did we get here?”

Vitrine: What do you think the West still fundamentally misunderstands about the cultures it once colonised?

AK: The West continues to underestimate how much of what it calls ‘tradition’ is actually a living, adaptive, intellectual system, often mistaking legibility for understanding. The colonial museum transformed relationships between people and objects into relationships between subjects and specimens. I think that distinction still shapes how cultural practices are encountered: what cannot immediately be translated into the museum’s existing categories is too easily treated as decorative, folkloric, spiritual, or otherwise outside intellectual discourse.

Vitrine: You’re spending a lot of time in Berlin. How has that city affected your practice?

AK: I think that Berlin has made me realise that distance is itself a material—one with which my practice is growing better acquainted. Alongside drawing, embroidery and repair, there is an experimental novel that I’ve been working on for the past six years. It has been on the forefront of my mind, and Berlin has nurtured it in ways that have been productive, but also disruptive. The writing has also fertilised various projects and series of works that I’m currently developing: a publication, a performance-based ritual, a new moving-image work.

Vitrine: Which conversations about contemporary art in Aotearoa (or in the world at large) do you think are exhausted, and which have barely begun?

AK: I’ve been living outside Aotearoa for a few years, so I’ve been engaging with the local contemporary art ecosystem from more of a distance. But one conversation with a senior curator at a social gathering some years ago stayed with me. They were describing the work of an artist who had just been commissioned to make a work for an institution—a remarkable award-winning work—and the curator made a remark directed toward me. They described with awe and admiration how this artist’s sensitive approach to materials was so compelling because it was devoid of any craft. This made me smile. And it stayed with me because it made me wonder why material intelligence, however it may be presented, acquires greater institutional value once it has been separated from the markings of historic labour and cultural practice that produced it. I suspect that is one conversation that is far from exhausted.

Areez Katki is represented in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland by Tim Melville and in Pōneke Wellington by McLeavy Gallery.

Read more of Nadine Rubin Nathan’s writing at @vitrineaotearoa
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Gavin Hurley paints faces borrowed from art history, layering flowers and familiar poses until portraiture starts to feel like homage. On the occasion of Other People’s Flowers, a group exhibition with Kirstin Carlin and Julia Holderness at Melanie Roger Gallery, we spoke with the artist about borrowed flowers, the pipe as a stand-in for masculinity, and painting Jean Cocteau’s face onto a stranger’s.

Your practice has long been grounded in portraiture and the codes of representation embedded in art history. With this series, the flowers partially obscure your portraits. What led you to use them as a kind of veil rather than a purely compositional device?

About twelve years ago, I was part of the Tylee Cottage residency in Whanganui. I often visit second-hand bookshops for research, and while I was there I found an image of Ben Shahn’s Blind Botanist.

It was a series featuring a young man holding thistles away from his face. In other works, the Botanist has grown old and the thorny branches cover his face. I have based many of my paintings on the idea of “growing up”, and I read these works by Shahn as depicting someone being overwhelmed by life. He described the version with the older man as being “to express a curious quality of irrational hope”.

You’ve drawn specific flowers from Gordon Walters, Michael Illingworth and Louise Henderson for this body of work — how did you choose which artists and which specific paintings to pull from?

I have borrowed flowers and abstract shapes from Louise Henderson’s Paper Flower Merchant before. In some of my paintings, they partially cover faces, although for these works I isolated a few flowers that emerge from the pipe.

I have always found Michael Illingworth’s paintings strange, but I love faces on things, so I had to try one of his flowers for the show.

The Gordon Walters chrysanthemum wasn’t part of my original plan. Then I read that it was one of his favourite paintings, and that making it gave him a sense of freedom and pleasure. I liked that, and it seemed like a good reason to include it.

The pipe recurs across the second series and carries quite loaded associations — Surrealism, colonial portraiture, a certain performance of masculinity. Was that ambiguity something you set out to explore, or did itemerge as you worked?

Pipes have recurred in my work many times over the years, for different purposes. I have never been a smoker, but I find images of smoking in art fascinating. In this group show, the flat shape of the pipe is like a thought or speech bubble. Other People’s Flowers is the title and theme of the exhibition, so the referenced flowers grow out of the pipes as homages to these artists.

Gavin Hurley, Boy with Illingworth’s Flower, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Melanie Roger Gallery.

Does the young male figure across this series represent a particular type, or is he more of a recurring character you return to across bodies of work?

The guy in these paintings is based on a sketch I found in an old catalogue of Jean Cocteau as a young man. I changed his hair but kept the shape of his face from the original drawing.

I made three of these paintings at the same time, keeping them almost identical apart from the flowers in the pipes. I had also underestimated the size of the flowers, so I had to use smaller brushes than I had originally expected.

Your practice has largely centred on male figures and the ideals of masculinity attached to them. In this series, though, women take centre stage in two of the larger works. Is that a shift in direction for you, or does it have more to do with the works’ connection to flowers?

I have been asked a lot about why I paint more men than women. I think there is more of a balance than it may seem to viewers at first glance. That balance has shifted considerably over the last few years, with a series of Rita Angus paintings made for a solo exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery last year, and with the continuing use of flowers over faces.

For Other People’s Flowers, it was simply a decision to paint two larger pieces with female faces. There was originally a plan to have one male and one female figure, but I’m a slow painter, and in the end the decision came down to what I felt would sit best within the show. One of the works almost didn’t get finished.

Gavin Hurley, Big Sonia with Henderson’s Flowers, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Melanie Roger Gallery.

How did working alongside Kirsten’s and Julia’s very different approaches to “borrowing” shape or shift your own thinking for this show?

Kirstin and I had an initial meeting with Melanie Roger, who curated the show. Julia is based in the South Island, so she wasn’t there in person.

I was very happy to be invited to show alongside them. Kirstin’s expressive approach to paint is very different from my hard edges. I especially like that, in this exhibition, she has made paintings that sit within a painting. Julia’s impressive, research-based ceramics are both painterly and sculptural.

Learn more about Other People’s Flowers here.
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Kirstin Carlin paints other people’s gardens into her own, cutting and reassembling her canvases until the frame itself becomes part of the work. For Other People’s Flowers, a group exhibition with Gavin Hurley and Julia Holderness at Melanie Roger Gallery, we spoke with the artist about building an archive from borrowed imagery, water-jet-cut aluminium panels, and painting her way through Joan Mitchell’s garden.

Flowers and gardens have consistently recurred throughout your practice. For these works, where did your inspiration come from?

Flowers and gardens regularly feature in my work — still life, gardens, landscape. I’m interested in the ubiquity of these subjects and their connection to painting’s history. I borrow, collect and rework imagery from photographs, books, magazines, historical paintings and online collections, continually building an expansive archive from which my paintings emerge. For the works in this show, I worked in a similar vein — trawling, borrowing and repurposing both historical and contemporary imagery.

Kirstin Carlin, Green, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Melanie Roger Gallery.

You are known for your unique style of mark making and the evocative interplay between abstraction and representation. At what point does an image stop being a reference and start becoming your own?

The imagery is always the very starting point of a painting — a springboard, a jumping-off point, a cue to “dive” into my own work. Sometimes I’m working from many different images: a path from here, trees from there, constantly pushing and pulling the image and thinking about process versus representation — marks for mark’s sake, and marks that aren’t for mark’s sake. I test how far an image can drift from its source while still carrying its trace.

Kirstin Carlin, South, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Melanie Roger Gallery.

The cut-out and reassembled elements complicate the idea of the frame in these new works. What drew you to physically cutting and moving paintings within paintings, rather than working within a single fixed surface?

Although I’ve been working with the idea of cut-outs in the studio for a while, the work in Other People’s Flowers is the first time I’ve shown works using this technique. It’s been fun heading out to industrial East Tāmaki to have my aluminium panels cut with a water jet.

I was asked at the opening of the exhibition how I came up with the idea of “cutting into” the paintings. It came from thinking about the edge of a painting — where it stops and the frame begins. I see the works as more than simply having an elaborate frame, though. They are paintings within a painting, an inside and outside, continuing my interest in pushing and pulling against figuration, mark making, imagery and process. By “remixing” my paintings, I break up the composition, and some of the formal decisions are forced out of my hands.

The title of the show is Other People’s Flowers. Whose flowers feel most present to you personally in this body of work?

I’m regularly painting “other people’s flowers” — a photograph of someone’s garden found online, reworking a still life by a favourite New Zealand modernist, or painting my grandmother’s roses. But the work I made for Other People’s Flowers fits into the show in a less literal way. My paintings are a stroll through Joan Mitchell’s garden in Vétheuil, “borrowing” her titles Weeds, Noon and South; channelling Frances Hodgkins — my constant companion — and her beautiful, wonky flowers; and appreciating the light touch of Joanna Margaret Paul’s blossoms and flowering plants.

Learn more about Other People’s Flowers here.
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Ngaroma Riley carves ancestors and family stories into wood, working her way into a tradition that hasn’t always made room for wāhine. With her carvings now included in Te Papa’s five-year exhibition He Toi Whakairo, alongside 147 taonga spanning seven centuries, and a new joint show with Tawhai Rickard opening at Tim Melville, Riley is having a breakout year. We spoke with her about learning to carve Buddhist statues in Japan, her love of chainsaws alongside traditional hand tools, and what it means to be part of a growing wave of wāhine carvers reclaiming space in whakairo.

Your work is currently on show at Te Papa as part of He Toi Whakairo, which is set to run for five years and sits alongside 147 taonga spanning seven centuries. What does it mean to have your work in that kind of company, and on that kind of timeline?

To be honest, it’s pretty mind blowing to have my work shown in such prestigious company. Not only because of the exquisitely carved works in the exhibition, but because of the carvers that I’m showing alongside. Some of the taonga whakairo (carved treasures) I’ve seen in books before and many of the tohunga whakairo (expert carvers) I hold in high esteem. I was very excited to meet Riki Manuel whose work I first saw in Japan as a 17-year-old exchange student. Seeing his work back then was a pivotal moment in time for me. I often look at our ancient taonga as points of reference because the carving styles have changed over time, with the resources and tools available to us. I’m still at the beginning of my carving career so I was definitely feeling a bit of imposter syndrome on the day of the opening.

 

Ngaroma Riley, Māmā, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Te Papa Museum.

Carving has historically had restrictions around who could carve what, particularly for wāhine. What did navigating those boundaries look like for you personally, and has that changed as more wāhine carvers come through?

There are currently some restrictions around carving but whether these were historical or not, we don’t really know. For example, most of the whakairo in the show at Te Papa are unprovenanced. That means that we don’t know who the makers were, but to assume that they were all carved by men helps perpetuate a narrative that women never carved. It’s not helpful and it doesn’t make sense.

We know that Māori society was a lot more fluid than Pākehā ethnographers would like us to believe. People had roles for sure and we certainly had our experts, but we all would have been skilled in material culture. We would have been able to make many items which are considered art forms now, but back then were necessary for survival. I can’t imagine any Māori woman sitting around waiting for someone to carve her something personal if she had the ability to do it herself. There are also well known stories of tupuna wāhine (female ancestors) who carved.

Sadly, because of colonisation, the art of carving and many aspects of Māori culture have been lost or gone to sleep. The revival of whakairo Māori has sought to exclude women but this is gradually changing. There are an increasing number of wāhine carvers and we have the first wahine carving shed at Te Tuhi in Pakuranga.

You started carving making Buddhist statues in Japan – how did that experience shape the way you approach wood and form today?

I really love carving in three-dimensional form. The brief tuition I had in carving Buddhist statues kickstarted this journey. Japan has a very long unbroken wood carving history, so there are many examples to draw inspiration from. They also use a range of tools in different ways to whakairo Māori (Māori carving) so I’m very fortunate to have acquired some basic skills that I can now apply to the work I’m doing.

Ngaroma Riley, The Lovers, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Tim Melville.

You’ve mentioned a love of chainsaws alongside more traditional carving tools – how do those different tools show up in your process?

I frequently use power tools to block out work and speed up the process in the initial stages of carving. I’m short with small limbs and an aging body. Carving is physical work and power tools allow me to conserve my energy. I use hand tools such as saws and chisels for carving and creating finer details in my work.

You recently won the Fair Trust Art Prize (presented by Eileen Fair Charitable Trust and Te Manawa), the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award 2025 and the Caselberg Trust Creative Connections residency in Dunedin. What impact has winning these awards and residencies had on your practice?

The Fair Trust Art Prize is huge for me as it will be my first solo show at a public gallery. I’m nervous but excited about the work I’m yet to make… (Did I mention that I have problems sleeping? Ha ha). The 2025 MMCA was my first major recognition as an artist and it was at that stage that I felt that I could start telling people I was an artist. It was great for my self-esteem. The Caselberg Trust Creative Connections residency was like a homecoming because I’ve spent a lot of time on the Otago Peninsula and in Dunedin. The residency gave me the space and time to research, create, connect, reflect and rest. It was very good for the soul and I hope all artists get this kind of opportunity at some stage in their career. The biggest impact on my arts practice so far has been the Papatunga residency at Te Tuhi in 2024. This grew into the establishment of the wāhine carvers studio: Te Ana o Hine at Te Tuhi. I am currently the ahi kaa at the studio and this has nurtured my practice beyond belief. It’s enabled me to focus on my career without fear, and to create works at a larger scale than before. Hiraani Himona and the team at Te Tuhi are staunch advocates for wāhine carvers and our movement.

Can you tell us about your upcoming exhibition at Tim Melville in September?

Pōnga Rā / when will you walk with me is a joint exhibition of work by Tawhai Rickard and myself. The title takes its name from a song written by Rob Ruha in 2014. My work features carved figures on a hikoi/protest. Among them are family members, tangata Tiriti and more. I remember going on hīkoi with my Māori mother and Pākehā father, because protesting injustice has always been a family affair. Held in the lead-up to Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2026 general election, this exhibition is my response to a government whose policies seek to diminish the role of Te Tiriti o Waitangi andundermine Māori representation. These policies form part of a wider political climate in which Māori rights and the place of Te Tiriti in our national life are increasingly contested.

Photo of Ngaroma Riley by Tui Hirabayashi.

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Julia Holderness works across ceramics, textiles, sound and text, always tracing how objects and ideas move between people. For Other People’s Flowers, a group exhibition with Gavin Hurley and Kirstin Carlin at Melanie Roger Gallery, we spoke with the artist about the shared studio of Doris Lusk, Anne Hamblett and Molly Lawn, flowers as carriers of friendship and influence, and why ceramic was the right form for this body of work.

You first developed this material for your exhibition The Studio, 2021 at Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2021. That project explored the shared studio of three young New Zealand artists—Doris Lusk, Anne Hamblett and Molly Lawn—who rented a space and worked together in central Ōtepoti Dunedin in the years following art school, 1939–40. What drew you back to it for this exhibition — did you find you weren’t finished with the group studio , or did something new open up?

One of the things I discovered while looking closely at Lusk and Hamblett’s work from that period was that they had used the same vases as subjects in their paintings. I became really interested in that small detail — the way an object could move between them, appearing in different paintings and taking on slightly different lives through each artist’s interpretation.

I started thinking about my own experiences of gardening alongside friends. We exchange tubers, cuttings, seeds, we talk about varieties and growing conditions, and pass flowers between our homes. There’s a kind of informal conversation that happens through those exchanges, and I began to see a parallel with the way artists exchange ideas, objects and influences. I was thinking about Lusk, Lawn and Hamblett bringing flowers to their studio, arranging them together and chatting about them.

So I suppose I wasn’t finished with Lusk, Hamblett and Lawn, but I also wasn’t simply trying to revisit that earlier exhibition. The vases opened up another way of thinking about their relationships — through the objects they shared and looked at together, and through the quiet forms of influence that happen between people who work alongside one another.

Julia Holderness, Flower Piece (Anne Hamblett 1939), 2026. Courtesy of the artist, SANDERSON and Melanie Roger Gallery.

Is there something particular about flowers — as opposed to any other still-life subject — that makes them suited to carrying influence and conversation across time and between artists?

I think flowers have a particular capacity to carry relationships because they are both incredibly specific and constantly changing. A flower can belong to a particular garden, person or season, but it can also be propagated, exchanged and carried somewhere else. Flowers also have such a long history within painting, so when you depict a flower you’re inevitably entering into a conversation with other artists and other images. I like that a flower can be both an ordinary, familiar thing and a vessel for quite complicated ideas about friendship, memory and time.

Julia Holderness, Installation View. Courtesy of the artist, SANDERSON and Melanie Roger Gallery.

You work across ceramics, textiles, sound and text. What made ceramic specifically the right material for this body of work, rather than paintings?

Melanie and I were interested in bringing an object-based element into Other People’s Flowers to complement Gavin and Kirstin’s wall works. Ceramic felt particularly appropriate because the vase is already at the centre of the story I was researching. It allowed me to take something that had existed as an image in Lusk and Hamblett’s paintings and return it to its three-dimensional form.

There’s also something interesting that happens when you make a painting on a vase. The work is still fundamentally concerned with painting — colour, composition, surface and the act of looking — but the image is wrapped around an object rather than contained by a rectangular frame. The surface curves, so the image changes as you move around it. You become aware of the vase as an object as well as an image.

I liked that tension between painting and sculpture, and between something functional and something purely visual.

Julia Holderness, Spring Blossom (Anne Hamblett 1939), 2026. Courtesy of the artist, SANDERSON and Melanie Roger Gallery.

How do you want your vases to sit alongside the works by Gavin and Kirstin in Other People’s Flowers — as a quiet historical footnote, or as something that talks back to the contemporary paintings around it?

Definitely as something that talks back. They are paintings, but paintings on a three-dimensional surface, and that creates a different physical relationship to the works around them.

I also like the idea that they bring the historical material into the present rather than keeping it at a distance. The vases have moved through different hands and different contexts — from the artists I was researching, into my research, and now into this exhibition alongside Gavin and Kirstin’s paintings. They become another kind of conversation.

For me, that’s what connects the historical and contemporary work: not necessarily that the artists are making the same kind of work, but that ideas, images, objects and influences keep being passed between people and transformed along the way.

Julia Holderness exhibits courtesy of SANDERSON where her exhibition ‘Botanical Correspondents’ will run concurrently from 26 August – 14 September.

Learn more about Other People’s Flowers here.
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SANDERSON & mothermother present an intergenerational exhibition investigating mother-centred frameworks and matriarchal futures. We spoke with Lydia Cowpertwait (SANDERSON), Nat Tozer and Michelle Reid (mothermother) about collective curation and why community beats competition.

Sanderson has opened its doors to MOTHERMOTHER, a collaborative project developed with an external collective. What made this the right exhibition to host, and what drew you to the partnership? 

Lydia: As a mum and director of a gallery, I have seen how transformative it can be when people are supported and given the confidence to be seen. To me, mothering is about nurturing potential, providing opportunities and helping others to flourish. I was naturally drawn to the mothermother collective because of their kaupapa, their ethos. Put simply – mothermother supports those who may not normally get support. Whether it’s emerging artists, women artists, queer artists or artists that feel like they don’t ‘fit in the box’. These values are deeply important to me and something I want to continue to foster at Sanderson so I wanted to collaborate and share their approach with our audience.

MOTHERMOTHER (Installation View), 2026

Elise McDermott, Big Chain, 2026

As a gallery known for championing contemporary practice, what opportunities does a collaborative, collective-led exhibition like MOTHERMOTHER create for both the artists and your audience? 

Lydia: One of the greatest opportunities a collaborative exhibition like MOTHERMOTHER creates is the chance to present a much broader and more layered conversation than a traditional exhibition might allow. Rather than experiencing an individual artist’s work in isolation, audiences are being invited into a dialogue between diverse voices, generations and varied creative practices. I think that creates a rich and immersive experience where people can make unexpected connections between works and ideas. 

For the artists, it offers something equally valuable. They become part of a collective conversation, where emerging and established practitioners sit alongside one another, each strengthening the impact of the others’ work. This creates visibility, encourages collaboration and fosters a sense of community rather than competition. As a commercial gallery, it’s a privilege to support the ecosystem and platforms like mothermother. I think contemporary art thrives when artists feel supported to take risks, share ideas and engage with audiences in meaningful ways like this. 

Michelle Reid, Kernel, 2025 – 2026

Hosting an exhibition of this scale brings together artists from multiple generations and communities. How does MOTHERMOTHER reflect the kind of conversations you want Sanderson to foster?

Lydia: MOTHERMOTHER creates space for complexity, generosity and different ways of seeing the world. Bringing together artists from multiple generations, backgrounds and lived experiences, it shows that there is no single story of motherhood, care or identity. Instead, it celebrates the richness that comes from many perspectives sitting alongside one another. For me, galleries should be places where people feel welcome to ask questions, challenge assumptions and discover concepts they may not have encountered before. I think the MOTHERMOTHER exhibition does exactly that – It invites conversations about creativity, kinship, gender and belonging, while remaining deeply rooted in the artists’ own experiences. I hope visitors leave feeling that contemporary art can be both intellectually engaging and emotionally accessible, and that Sanderson Gallery is a place where conversations like this happen with curiosity, openness and respect.

MOTHERMOTHER (Installation View), 2026

The exhibition explores themes ranging from ecology and kinship to grief, identity and matriarchal futures. Was there a particular work or pairing that crystallised the exhibition’s central ideas for you?

Nat: Melanie Ross’ work quietly grapples with aspects of reproductive labour. Formally, it is a highly dynamic work: it can go on the floor, wall, or in space; it can be oriented up or down; it is both delicate and metal, elemental. Conceptually, it has evolved through several titles: first Feminist Wave, then Dirty Leak and Free Pour, to Undercurrent. Materially, it is made from cast-off, discarded foundry remnants that Ross melted down—her way of nurturing and caring, to reposition the material into the world as an artwork. All these complex aspects feel like real life to me: the way, as women, we must adapt to survive, and the way, as mothers, we need to be ‘several’—identities, ideas, and personas—to others, whilst we move into motherhood and must remake ourselves. 

Michelle: During curatorial discussions small pairings of work began to harmonise between each other through material refinement, artist practises, and thematic conversations. The more tender, organic and ephemeral moments for me are at the start of the show between Esther Stone’s Compulsion, Michelle Mayn’s Kuruwaka and Sack, and Sarah Smuts-Kennedy’s inquiry into divination through her Eclipse Portal. These artists have found ways to dedicate their wider artistic practices to ecological regeneration, whanau, and whakapapa, reaching far beyond gallery spaces by working with ecology and care. These artists engage in material relationships specific to Aotearoa in a nurturing way, through both material and immaterial possibilities. 

Robyn Walton, Make Work, 2024-2026

Co-curating an exhibition of this scale requires balancing many voices. How did your own perspectives complement one another, and what did each of you bring to the development of MOTHERMOTHER?

Nat: mothermother has been going for seven years now; we have been in several art fairs and held 35 exhibitions, but this exhibition is unique as we addressed the challenging theme of motherhood itself. Yes, we have performed mothering through the core functions of the mothermother project, but we have not portrayed mothering before, and the responsibility of this felt very heavy. What if we got it wrong, weren’t feminist enough, or missed something important? What if we failed?! But, that is mothering. It is messy, imperfect, always out of time, always out of place, and certainly includes mistakes and failure. What made it possible was sharing the weight of it all. Michelle and Lydia brought the safety that comes with collectivity, and we turned to our manifesto and looked to those who have come before us. 

Michelle: An unexpected moment during curatorial decision making was recognising the borderline absurdity during caregiving that crosses between labour, humour, domesticity, sexuality, broken hearts, and unexplainable misfortunate events. We loved the pairings of Robyn Walton’s Make Work together with Caitlyn Devoy’s Canons, Hanna Shim’s cushion Mistake, Natalie Pryor’s A Long Thought, and smattering the surrounding wall with Aria McInnes Napkin Chicken’s. Nearby are Jacquelyn Fahey’s That Is Life, Judy Darragh’s No Shit, and Layla Rudneva Mackay’s Worry Green. These artist voices contributed to enriching the experiences of mothering rather than romanticising or solely depicting it. Intergenerational conversations can be thoughtful and invigorating this way.

MOTHERMOTHER (Installation View), 2026

What do you hope audiences carry with them after experiencing MOTHERMOTHER, particularly at a time when conversations around care, community and intergenerational connection feel increasingly urgent?

Nat: Middle-aged emerging mutha-artists are hot af. Support us!!

Michelle: Mothermother has been considering modes of sustainable practice for some time including being on the receiving end of funds and spaces that are so squeezed they need reform or dematerialise. Artists are familiar with proposal sending being closer to a magical Hogwart’s carrier post by owls than a real possibility in recent times. It feels better to synchronise, it’s far warmer to work with a community than individually. We are grateful to Lydia for opening up Sanderson and contributing to alternative ways of working in her gallery.

Sophie Bannan, Untitled, 2019

Learn more about the exhibition here.
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@sandersoncontemporaryart
@mothermother_archive

Judy Darragh transforms found objects into work that is playful, political, and quietly uneasy. On the occasion of POOL, her current exhibition at Two Rooms, we spoke with the artist about humour as an entry point, the value of the artist, and why the object always finds you.

Judy Darragh, Globe, 2025

You have spoken about making art during a time of economic uncertainty. Did the current moment shape the way POOL came together, whether through your choice of materials, process or ideas?

I am interested in how we talk about investment in art, the value of the artwork and how artists ‘invest’ in their careers… It’s a capitalist lens. I argue that the art is valued more than the artist; how should the artist be valued?

I’ve been thinking what recession art would look like: collected stamps, rubber bands, hessian sacks? POOL was a collection of works that had been sitting in my studio; it was great to see how they came together in the space. POOL means to collect together, pool resources; it is a positive action.

Judy Darragh, Hubcap, 2026

Your practice has long transformed found objects into sculptures that feel both playful and politically charged. What continues to fascinate you about the lives these objects carry before they enter the gallery?

A found object has a past life; they come charged with history in particular. My use of plastics is more resonant now as we are facing microplastics in our bodies and planet. These bright, shiny, and colourful objects are problematic. I often use objects taken from op shops etc., and make them into a work and then return them to the op shops. I would see artists spending a lot of money fabricating works; I had to find a more sustainable way of making work.

Judy Darragh, Pool, 2026

You’ve spent decades reinventing the language of sculpture. What still surprises you in the studio, and what keeps you experimenting?

My output is determined by what I find. The French Surrealists suggested the object finds you, objet trouvé, I certainly find that is true. I currently have 12 reposable toy horses in my studio; they were collected over 12 months, and they are standing by. As artists, we don’t just stop making; it is pathological and a language that we are using to create conversations. I have a studio full of ideas yet to be resolved; we are problem solvers.

Judy Darragh, Stilleto, 2026

What’s happening next in your world, any other upcoming exhibitions?

I’m involved in arts advocacy, Arts Makers Aotearoa, paying artists’ fees in particular. We will be looking to see what the election will bring regarding arts policy etc., as we know the cuts to arts are real. The message of valuing the artist is more important than ever.

Learn more about POOL here.

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@tworoomsgallery
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For over four decades, Australian artist Marion Borgelt has pursued a practice rooted in the elemental — light, cosmos, the patterns that pulse beneath the surface of the natural world.

Known for her extraordinary range of materials and a singular visual language that moves between painting, sculpture, and installation, Borgelt brings her work to New Zealand for the first time at Aotearoa Art Fair 2026 with Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert. Here, she speaks about the origins of her creative life, the dialogue between idea and material, and what it means to finally share a cross-section of her work with the audiences who have quietly collected it for years.

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What first drew you to art, and was there a moment you knew it was the path you’d commit to?

Art always felt like the right niche for me — it was less of a choice but more a natural way of thinking and being.

Growing up, I was constantly drawn to creative outlets—not sparked by any single moment, but by an underlying, persistent desire to make, imagine and express. Fashion, architecture, design and the visual arts interested me the most.

Your practice spans over 40 years. What has kept you returning to themes like cosmology and light?

From an early age, growing up on a farm, I observed the power of nature, the changing seasons, shifting light, and the vast open skies.

The natural world is endlessly revealing. Its infinite variety draws us out of the routine of daily life and invites us to notice what usually slips past: the layered complexity, the subtle patterns, the small, intricate moments that make up something much larger. The longer you look, the more it gives back. In that sense, observation becomes a kind of discovery. As for light and the cosmos, they say that a submariner, after being underwater for months at a time, longs to see sunlight and the sky. Looking towards the heavens is a natural human instinct.

Marion Borgelt
Chrysalis Moon: No. 2, 2026
electroplated aluminium gold leaf, ABS polymer, polyurethane, matt varnish (Auckland)
172 x 41 x 16 cm
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.

You work across such a wide range of materials, from beeswax to stainless steel. How do you choose which material is right for a particular idea?

The ideas themselves often suggest their own materials as if the concept possesses its own language for how it wants to be realised. Certain thoughts feel inseparable from a particular texture, weight, or process, guiding the choice almost intuitively. At the same time, this relationship isn’t always one-directional—materials have a voice of their own. Their qualities, limitations, and possibilities can reshape the original idea, taking it in unexpected directions.

More often than not, the two meet somewhere in the middle, where concept and material dovetail into a natural pairing. It’s less about imposing an idea onto a medium and more about allowing a dialogue to unfold, where both elements inform and refine each other.

Marion Borgelt
Liquid Light: Butterfly No. 27, 2026
acrylic, timber, Belgian linen, nails
Ø 55 x 4 cm
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.

This is your New Zealand debut. What does it mean to bring your work here for the first time, and what do you hope Auckland audiences take away from the experience?

New Zealanders have been collecting my work for more than twenty years. What makes this moment different is that, for the first time, a cross-section of my work will be shown together—offering audiences a clearer, more cohesive insight into the ideas and approach that have shaped it over time. I’m really excited to have this opportunity to develop and expand my relationship with New Zealand art lovers and collectors.

Learn more about the artist here.

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@gallerysallydancuthbert
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Pepi‑Joy Gilgen is a Waikato‑based textile artist whose work is shaped by the way her tamariki see the world.

Ahead of her presentation at the Aotearoa Art Fair with Artor Contemporary, we spoke to the artist about her practice encompassing whakapapa, pūrākau, and the responsibilities of motherhood told through tactile forms that connect story, environment, and belonging. Each piece carries themes of taiao, whakapapa, and kaitiakitanga, while also reflecting the possibilities that emerge through kotahitanga.

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Your practice is deeply inspired by the way your tamariki see the world, can you describe a specific moment with your children that sparked or shifted your work?

When we became parents, we committed to speaking Maaori to our babies. This encouraged us to have taonga Maaori available for them. I began making fabric poi with bells inside and poi piu as a rattle they could play with. Acknowledging orokohanga, taiao and atua when making has helped reshape how I think and how my tamariki experience the world. Over time, this led me to create a tactile plush mobile with motifs of taiao for Waawaahi Tahaa Collective (Maamaa group in Waikato) as a tool to learn pepeha in a kinaesthetic way. This was inspired from poi.

Image: Tuna pikipiki, tuna hekeheke, 2026

Textiles are such a tactile, intimate medium. Why textiles as the vessel for exploring te reo Māori and kōrero tuku iho?

Textiles have always been my chosen medium, shaped by my early training in fashion and my ongoing respect for the material. Although we interact with textiles constantly, we often overlook its importance in our everyday lives. Since having tamariki, te reo Maaori has become the foundation of our communication and learning, including transmission of koorero, whakapapa, and ways of being into our daily world. They are my teachers.

Image: Left: Te aitanga a Punga, 2026.  Right: Huetahi, 2026

You describe your works as inviting people to “trace the threads of memory” . Whose memories are held in these pieces, and how do you navigate the personal alongside the collective?

These works hold the memories of our tuupuna, our mokopuna, and all those who have carried and revitalised our language, tikanga and Maaori worldview. My creative process draws from these collective threads and are a continuation of those who came before me.

Image: Studio Image

How do you think about the next generation engaging with your work, what do you hope a child feels when they touch or experience these pieces? How they react/interact with these.

I hope those who interact with these works feel the mauri instilled within them. That it may prompt reflection of their own connection to identity and inspire those to learn the stories of their own ancestors.

Learn more about Artor Contemporary presentation at the Fair here
Aotearoa Art Fair returns to the Viaduct Events Centre from 30 April – 3 May. Tickets are on sale now.

All images credit by Rozenn Jang @‌rozennjang_

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Fashion and art often intersect in your work. What role has visual art played in shaping your creative thinking over the years?

Fashion is, of course, a creative practice, but it comes with its own set of rules and constraints — some necessary, some inherited. Visual art feels freer to me. It has no obligation to be wearable, saleable, or even comfortable. That freedom allows ideas to be pushed further, to be more challenging, more disruptive. Art, at its best, unsettles things. It asks questions rather than providing answers. That openness — the breadth of thought and possibility — has always been deeply influential for me, and continues to feed the way we think creatively as a team.

Michael Parekowhai, Ed Brown, 2000

What was the first artwork you ever bought or lived with, and what drew you to it?

My first real art purchase was “Ed Brown” – one of Michael Parekowhai’s sparrows in 2000. It’s lived with me ever since. What captivated me was its presence — its majesty, really. People are often surprised by it. More than once, visitors have mistaken it for an eagle or something far more quotidian than a sparrow. There’s something in the angle of the head, the sense of dominance and quiet strength, that elevates it beyond the ordinary. I love that contradiction — the everyday made monumental.

How does living with art influence the atmosphere of a home or studio?

For me, I choose art that brings me joy. For someone starting their collection, what do you think is the most important instinct to trust when choosing a work?  Does it make you feel something? If not, it’s just paint on canvas. Aotearoa has such a distinctive contemporary art scene.

Julia Holderness, Garden at Loxley, 2022, courtesy SANDERSON

Are there particular artists or practices here that you find especially exciting right now?

We’re thrilled to be hosting Monica Rani Rudhar and Jess Swney with Foėnander Galleries, and Julia Holderness and Josephine Cachemaille with Sanderson Gallery in our Britomart store during this Art Fair season. Artists I’ve long admired include Lisa Reihana and Michael Parekowhai — true icons. And, of course, our home would be unimaginable without the work of my favourite artist of all, and our artist-in-residence, my husband, Mikhail.

During the art fair, Karen Walker will be hosting a pop-up gallery space in collaboration with the Art Fair. Can you tell us a little bit about this?

It’s a real privilege to be hosting these local artists, Monica Rani Rudhar, Jess Swney, Julia Holderness and Josephine Cachemaille in our Britomart store. The space itself is constantly evolving — it has beautiful natural light, a very high stud, and a strong architectural presence thanks to Cheshire Architects. It feels like the perfect environment for art — generous, open, and alive — and we’re excited to see these works inhabit the space in their own way.

What makes an art fair, like the Aotearoa Art Fair, such a unique way to experience and discover art?

I love the energy of an art fair. Seeing work in galleries is important, but there’s something uniquely exhilarating about bringing so many artists and galleries together in one place. There’s an intensity to it — a sense of generosity and openness — where anyone can wander in, whether they’re a seasoned collector or simply curious. That collective energy creates a joyous, electric atmosphere that’s very hard to replicate elsewhere.

Rooted in Te Whare Pora as both a physical and spiritual state, Peata Larkin explores holding, endurance, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge through weaving traditions of raranga and tāniko.

Ahead of her presentation at the Aotearoa Art Fair with both Two Rooms and the Sculpture Trail, we spoke about the role of movement and scale in shaping experience, and how reflective, layered materials create a dialogue between lightness and weight, earth and atmosphere. Larkin’s work extends beyond objecthood, drawing viewers into a shared relational space with Ranginui and Papatūānuku.

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Ka Mau, Ka Ora speaks to holding, endurance, and the transmission of knowledge. How did these ideas shape both the concept and structure of the work?

I wanted to express Te Whare Pora as a state of being, not just a physical place. Two key elements shaped this: drawing on ancestral raranga and tāniko forms, and grounding the work in the whenua it sits upon. These patterns carry knowledge, so they became a way to speak to both the space of Te Whare Pora and its deeper connections.

The 4 structures together resemble the shape of a whare, but they also create a passageway for people to walk through. It was important for the work to be experienced physically, as an entry point into the Aotearoa Art Fair. Moving through it becomes part of the work, a transition into another space.

The sculpture also honours and celebrates Hineteiwaiwa, guardian of Te Whare Pora, and atua of childbirth and the creative realms of wāhine Māori. She represents the continuation of life, navigation, and protection, so every element acknowledges wāhine Māori and the relationship between Ranginui and Papatūānuku.

I want people to feel that as they move through the work, they are entering my interpretation of Te Whare Pora, held within the presence of Hineteiwaiwa. I hope they can feel the wairua of that experience.

Hineteiwaiwa (detail), 2026

This work invites audiences to move through and beneath it. What role does the body, and embodied experience, play in how you want the work to be understood?

I’m drawn to sculptural installation because it behaves very differently to painting. It can interrupt, direct, and shape how a person moves within a space. My intention is to create a bodily experience where the viewer becomes part of the work, woven into the kaupapa rather than standing outside it. I want to create an atmosphere where the wairua and aroha of weaving can be felt. Scale plays an important role in this. I wanted the work to have an architectural presence, large enough to stand beneath and walk through comfortably, while still operating at a human scale so the experience remains intimate. It holds the body, rather than overwhelming it, which is reiterated in the narrow panels of each structure.

The materiality contributes to that experience. The laser-cut stainless steel has a reflective, almost ethereal quality. It allows people to catch glimpses of themselves within the work, but never as a complete or fixed image. The reflection is fragmented, shifting, and partial. The structure also draws the body upward and outward. It invites you to look up toward Ranginui, to feel the warmth of rā, and to notice the shadows moving across your body and the ground. In that moment, the viewer becomes aware of themselves within the shared realm of Ranginui and Papatūānuku.

The painter in me loves the evolving surface quality of Corten steel as it weathers. The Corten acts as the punga, the anchor. It brings weight and painterly effects, grounding the work in contrast to the lightness of the reflective stainless steel. I’m interested in that interplay, between the ethereal and the earthly, lightness and weight. These material qualities shape how the work is felt, not just how it is seen.

Silent Kōrero (detail), 2026

Hineteiwaiwa and the traditions of Te Whare Pora are central references here. How do you approach bringing these deeply rooted frameworks into a contemporary, public context?

One of the most powerful moments for me in recent Aotearoa history was when Rawiri Waititi said, “You may not know your maunga, you may not know your awa, but your maunga and awa know you… You may not know your reo, but your reo knows you.” That whakaaro stays with me. I see mahi toi, whether traditional or contemporary, as an extension of that idea, an expression of an unseen connection that exists within us.

There is something that stirs when we encounter our culture, whether we feel connected to it or not, whether we feel worthy of it or not. I know this because I’ve experienced it myself. As a young wahine, not knowing my whakapapa was confusing and painful. There was a deep sense of mamae and whakama. Creating became a way to move through that, a way to process and transform those feelings. It allowed me to find strength. Each work became a declaration of identity, a way of saying I am Māori, and that truth cannot be taken away.

Bringing frameworks like Hineteiwaiwa and Te Whare Pora into a contemporary, public context comes from that lived experience. I approach it through my own lens, understanding that my voice is shaped by both disconnection and reconnection. Everything I learn is carried into the work, and translated through my practice. In that way, the work sits both within my personal journey and within a wider continuum of tangata whenua.

Acknowledging and celebrating Hineteiwaiwa and Te Whare Pora is central to this because it is through these frameworks that I found my voice, my strength, and my sense of identity as a wahine. While my journey with te reo is ongoing, I feel deeply connected through making, through the inherited knowledge held in the hands of my tīpuna. To bring this into a public space for the Aotearoa Art Fair is an honour. This work celebrates wāhine Māori across generations, those who create, who nurture, who carry knowledge. By moving through and engaging with the sculpture, people are not only witnessing the kaupapa, but physically and, I hope, emotionally, acknowledging it as well.

How does the setting of the Sculpture Trail, alongside the Viaduct Harbour, shape the way the work is experienced?

It is important for me to acknowledge the whenua that the work sits upon. The repeated forms evoke Aramoana, the pathway to the sea, responding directly to its placement alongside the Waitematā Harbour. The sculpture also functions as a passageway, marking an entry point into the Aotearoa Art Fair. As people move through it, they pass by and beneath forms that reference kaokao, offering a sense of protection to all who enter. In this way, the location shapes the experience. The work is not separate from its surroundings; it is in conversation with the harbour, the whenua, and the movement of people through that space.

What work are you presenting with Two Rooms inside the Fair, and does it mark any new directions in your practice?

The work I’m presenting with Two Rooms is a large painting/lightbox titled Hineteiwaiwa. This sits within a series I began last year for Sydney Contemporary, starting with Mahuika, the atua wahine of fire. It felt apt to create Hineteiwaiwa given the sculptural installation placed outside the Fair.

I hadn’t created any painting/lightboxes for several years, one of the last being the large 5.5m x 11m painting/lightbox panels hanging in the Park Hyatt hotel lobby, located across from the events centre. The pull to create a new series of illuminated paintings was strong. I think materiality in my practice often operates at a subliminal level. For example, my silk works hold a tension between fragility and strength, which reflects what I’m exploring in those pieces. The materiality becomes part of the storytelling. The painting/lightboxes, on the other hand, speak more to states of personal enlightenment and otherworldly realms. That’s why I’m drawn to using modern materials in these works. They carry a contemporary energy and place the work within a present-day context. There’s also a connection to the visual language of screens and digital imagery, which feels relevant to how we experience the world now.

At the same time, I’m aware of painting as part of a long lineage. The act itself carries history, and I see my practice as both within and beyond that, where my paintings and sculptures move together, each informing the other, to shape a more holistic voice. Alongside Hineteiwaiwa, I will also be presenting a silk painting from my new Silent Kōrero series, titled Silent Kōrero (Mā_2026).

Silent Kōrero, 2026

Where do you see your practice evolving in the next 10 years?

I’ve been creating for over 2 decades, and I’ve never looked that far into the future, and I don’t intend to start now. I see each day of creating as a privilege. Every work, whether a painting or a sculpture, is informed by what came before it and shaped by lived experience, moments, feelings, and what I continue to learn from my whānau and iwi.

That’s how my practice evolves, through doing, through responding, through learning. I don’t try to map it out too far ahead. What I do know is that I will keep creating. It feels essential, like breathing. Where it leads, I’m open to that… It’s a beautiful journey I don’t take for granted.

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What ideas or starting points are shaping the work you’re presenting at Aotearoa Art Fair this year?

For this suite of work the paintings are inspired by time spent at two locations. The hills and grasslands of Wirdajuri Country in Cowra and the subtropical rainforest of the Dharawal people in Stanwell Tops. My practice is grounded in returning to the landscape. Both these places I have been lucky enough to spend time painting in over the last few years. I bring my paints and paper and engage with the landscape plein air. It becomes a kind of communion, both with the environment and with myself. I’m interested in the simple, intuitive process of looking and responding, of building an image from disparate parts.

Your paintings often hover between figuration and abstraction, with light and texture evoking the Australian landscape rather than describing it. What draws you to that in‑between space?

This style of making came about by accident. I was reaching to explore the colours, shapes, textures in front of me in the landscape. It was a spontaneous moment of play. Very much focused on the practice of ‘look and put’. I was being very mindful of the placement and slowly building up the picture. I think this way of working flowed out of my drawing practice where there is also a white background working with a concentration of lines of light and dark.

Another aspect is attempting to capture an essence of something. Not quite what it looks like in a camera but how it feels or how we perceive it through our bodies and vision, our lived perceptual field. We can see what something looks like as a whole, and in the process of reaching to express what’s being seen, something completely different can be created or formed. Exposing a gap between what is seen and what is rendered. I’m interested in what happens in that space. Predominantly in reference to the landscape as it contains many abstracted organic forms.

You’re presenting with Martin Browne Contemporary within an Aotearoa context, how do you think about your work sitting within that space?

Martin, my gallerist recently purchased one of my landscape paintings to live in situ at his home just outside of Auckland. For him I believe the work resonated with the landscape near or around his home and he was eager to connect the inside with the outside, his felt experience of the place.

While a work can be painted based on the engagement with a specific location I’m further understanding how the work comes to life in the imagination and the mind of the audience. Generally connecting back to their own lived experience and memories within the landscape. I hope presenting at Aotearoa can offer the work and people an opportunity for a dialogue around their personal memories and landscapes.

When you’re not in the studio, what keeps you inspired or recharged? Are there particular routines or escapes that feed back into your art?

Outside of the studio I’m very interested in examining my lived experience of life. Continuing to learn different ways to engage with it and myself to create more fulfilling outcomes. At the moment I’m interested in Carl Jung and his dream analysis of symbols. Along with a continued interest in mindfulness practices such as journaling, meditating and gardening. I enjoy the comforts of home but also the excitement of leaving the city for somewhere more green, or closer to the ocean. For the past few years I’ve been going on regular trips to Austinmer on the NSW South Coast. There have also been a multitude of residencies that I’ve either been invited to or organised. For the Aotearoa Art Fair since I’ve planned to come I’ll be visiting the town of Raglan and spending some time there before the Fair to recharge.

Is there something about being part of the Aotearoa Art Fair you especially look forward to?

I’m looking forward to being able to come this year. I’ve shown work with the Aotearoa Art Fair before and was unable to make it. I heard the work really resonated with audiences so it’s lovely to have this opportunity again and be able to be there to meet people, galleries and see the other artworks!

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Your recent São Paulo Biennale project For time is the witness of humanity carries a powerful title, what were you exploring through that body of work?

Bonaventure’s approach to the biennale is very poetic and deeply layered. The 36th São Paulo biennale is titled, Not all travellers walk roads-Of humanity as practice. Poetry is an important aspect of my practice. They go hand in hand. Titles of works and exhibition texts are an extension of my writing practice and poetry. Furthermore, I usually write a poem for each body of work I create. So, for the body of work for the biennale, I wrote a poem by the same title of my biennale work. In the first two lines I wrote, The many waters of our being, / Time you have seen it all.

I saw time as an access point to discuss ideas of humanity, diaspora and ancestry. Time has always been a major part of my practice. In my work the past, present and future coexist in the same space. There is no separation between those three-time realms.  Speculative fiction language and concepts are often the vehicle I use to talk about serious and complex topics in a way that brings a poetic approach. For the biennale I began to imagine time as this person or being who has witnessed all the progress of our humanity. The paintings are built around that personification of time. but it is also a meditation of time. It is also about the humanity lived through it. The thing about time is that we all must experience our lives and humanities through its abundance and constraints. In the paintings there are both mortals, immortals, ancestors and those in the future all practicing humanity in different ways, but coexisting.

Even some of the materials I used harken to time. For example, within some of the paintings I have materials such as Baobab leaf powder sourced from Nigeria. Baobab a tree native to Africa is one of the oldest living trees that has been coined as the “tree of life”. It lives for thousands of years and is mentioned in various African mythologies. Using a material that has been present during humanity for thousands of years, that has witnessed it all even the parts lost, forgotten and stolen is a powerful alignment for me conceptually. It also seen as a bridge between the heavens and the earth.  A symbol of interconnectedness between nature and humans and the mundane and the spiritual.

The body of work overall is also an archive of black diasporic life. I am Yoruba and there is a strong cultural tie between Brazil and the Yoruba people. Those diasporic ties, spiritual ties and historical ties are also explored in the body of work. The body of work is a complex web of humanity and all the parts that it embodies. So, it is both historical, philosophical, anthropological, spiritual, ancestral, psychological and mythical. It is quite a layered body of work that has various threads of connections that make a whole.

For time is the witness of humanity, São Paulo 36th Biennale. Photo: Natt Fejfar / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

What does it take, practically and mentally, to sustain momentum after a busy year like you’ve just had?

For me, it is to not lose sight of what has drawn me to art. I try to surround myself with things that continue to inspire me to paint and create. I fill up my spirit, heart and mind with things that empower me and liberate me. I am such a workaholic, but I have been recently learning to pause and rest during my busy schedule. Even if it is just for a day.  I am still practicing that aspect. I do feel I am getting better at it. Recently I have taken various breaks from social media and emails when demands start to pile up. Then I return to tackle what needs to be done. I am still figuring out the best holistic way that works for me. However, I am truly grateful for all the wonderful opportunities.

For time is the witness of humanity, São Paulo 36th Biennale. Photo: Natt Fejfar / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

How do you know when a work is resolved, especially within a practice that embraces ambiguity?

Intuition is major guiding force in my practice. There are elements in my work that are fixed such as my blue palette, the black figure and various cultural elements. However, intuition is how I navigate and respond to each brushstroke. I know a painting is done when there is a certain emotional response, I get from looking at it. There is a certain knowing I feel. Even if a painting looks resolved and I do not feel it is there, yet I will continue to work on it till I get that inner resolve that it is ready. I believe it makes each painting special and unique, because each was brought about by a different response or inner conversation.

Painting is truly having a conversation with the canvas. Sometimes it is a long passionate conversation. Each brush stroke spherically ascending to create form. Sometimes it is just listening. Sitting after each brush stroke and allowing it to lead. Sometimes it is just like breath, meditation and ancestral veneration where you connect to something bigger than yourself and pour that out onto the canvas. Painting is both magical and mundane. That is the thing that fascinates me about it.

Ruth Ige, Twins (Immortals), 2025. Photo: Cheska Brown

What can audiences expect from your presentation with McLeavey Gallery at Aotearoa Art Fair?

I am going to be showing my work alongside the amazing Zhu Ohmu. I will be presenting a small selection of my body work, The poetic notions of blue: A safe haven, which was recently awarded the Rydal prize. It exhibited in Wellington and so I am thrilled to show a selection of the work to the Tāmaki Makaurau audience. I will also be showing some new works on paper in conjunction to those works. The works on paper will be little snapshots or time portals to those havens

What kinds of conversations do you hope your work opens up for viewers?

I hope it opens conversations around ideas of perception. What are the ideas that we use to perceive the world and those around us. Especially when we perceive those different from us. Learning to not look at people with fixed stereotypes that have been systemically placed to oppress those very people.  That instead of having a fixed conclusive assumption of someone it is ok to not to know. Instead, it is ok to just listen. I also hope that the paintings allow people to meditate, to escape, to rest, to heal and to wonder beyond their own realms of understanding into other distant realms. I hope that people see the multiplicity of blackness that has always been.

Ruth Ige, Garden (A haven), 2025. Photo: Cheska Brown.

Where do you see your practice evolving over the next decade?

Wherever the spirit of creativity takes me. I see my practice expanding in various forms and ways. Painting is central to what I do. However, there are other elements of my practice I want to bring out more alongside my paintings. Elements such as sound, poetry, adornment, performance art and various ancestral practices. A major part of my paintings deals with world building and so I want to continue to bring those elements out in grander and bigger ways. Also to continue to explore, deepen and expend my research and use of Nigerian leaves used in traditional medicine, food and practices as painting pigments. I have already begun this. You can see these materials and explorations in my work in the biennale and the works that will be presented at the fair.  I am excited to continue this exploration. It is something I am passionate about. In studio I am continually experimenting with various cultural material and seeing how it translates into paint. The sky is the limit at this point.

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Hariata Ropata-Tangahoe, In death all things become clear, 2009-19, William Austin

How would you describe the curatorial vision of the gallery, and how has it evolved over time?

I’d like to think the gallery has had a somewhat consistent vision over the five years. I’m drawn to work that relates to the world around us but shows the artist’s voice and experience within that — work that is rough around the edges and shows the making. Life isn’t always meant to be pretty!

Julian Hooper, New Leven, 2025, William Austin

The gallery recently shifted from Envy to William Austin – what prompted that change, and what feels different under this new name?

Moving to the new space I reflected on the name and the question “why did you call it Envy?” kept playing like a broken record.. Sometimes with genuine curiosity and sometimes with true disgust.. at the end of the day the old gallery felt like the ‘Envy project’ and the right time to move on.  William Austin is my first and middle name, but not a name I go by, so it has a nice removedness to it. “Who the f*ck is William Austin?” is the new gallery slogan. The new space also gives artists more room to work with — a bigger floor area and four-metre-tall walls make for more versatility.

Hariata Ropata-Tangahoe, Mei Carkeek-Higgot, 2002, William Austin

What draws you to the artists you represent, and what qualities or practices tend to resonate most with you?

Works that have grunt and from people who truly believe in what they do.

In the context of the Aotearoa Art Fair, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for your artists and programme?

The art fair brings visibility — for spectators, gallerists and artists alike. Many of the artists I show are from Tāmaki, but the fair is an integral part of growing the gallery and connecting new audiences with the work. In previous years I’ve made connections that have carried through to the gallery in ways that would have taken much longer to build by staying in Wellington alone. At the fair, my aim is to represent the gallery’s programme – work that challenges and excites – for people to see an artwork/artist for perhaps their first time and to stop, to be delighted and curious.. to ask questions…

Rangi White, Dieu et mon droit, 2025, William Austin, Futures

Your booth brings together an intergenerational group of artists, what conversations or connections were you hoping to create between these different practices?

I like to think the older artists I represent enjoy being around the fresh energy of the younger artists in the stable, and vice versa — that the younger generation feels honoured to show within that lineage. It’s interesting to see work made thirty years ago alongside work made today. They may have some differences in appearance, but deep down they’re still trying to answer similar questions. People have always been interested in interrogating their place in the world and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.. It’s also a reminder that being an artist isn’t fuckn’ easy!

Anna Sisson, Pushing Back, 2025, William Austin

What’s happening next in the world of William Austin Gallery?

After the fair we open Hariata Ropata-Tangahoe’s first solo show with the gallery — an artist I feel privileged and lucky to be entrusted to work with. The work at the fair focuses on her historical pieces, while the Wellington solo will be mostly new work. All gallery artists will have a solo exhibition this year or early next year, and I’m also looking forward to working more closely with new(ish) additions to the programme — including Jack Hadley’s first solo exhibition in Wellington at the gallery later this year too.