Horizons: Emerging Artist Sector
PRESENTED BY
Presented by Chapman Tripp, Horizons highlights new-generation and unrepresented artists from across Aotearoa and the Pacific.
Horizons 2026 features four booths curated by Dan Ahwa, Matthew Galloway, Chevron Hassett and Becky Hemus — and is facilitated by Becky Hemus, publisher and editor-in-chief of Current art magazine.
HORIZONS BOOHTS
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.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nadia Marychurch (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Raukawa) 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.
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.
“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 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.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
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) is an Ōtautahi-based artist working 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.
Curated by Dan Ahwa
Feauturing Isaac Te Awa, Vivian Arthur Hosking-Aue, Pamata Toleafoa, Stevei Houkāmau, Sofia Tekela-Smith, Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows, Selina Shanti-Woulfe
This exhibition foregrounds seven artists exploring identity, heritage, and the evolving language of adornment.
Adornment, in Pacific cultures, is never merely decorative – it is a language of identity, lineage, and belonging.
Grounded in this understanding, curator and journalist Dan Ahwa presents a series of works documenting seven artists engaged in contemporary expressions of taonga/measina (treasures).
Building on a longstanding body of editorial work where adornment has been central to his visual language, Ahwa has consistently explored it as a focal point across image-making and styling. His work has used adornment as a lens through which to consider identity, contemporary Pacific expression, and the relationship between body, object, and image – a dialogue he has long platformed through mass media and now extends into a gallery context.
Focusing on pieces created for the head and neck – the most sacred parts of the body in the Pacific – the exhibition brings together works that balance cultural continuity with individual expression. From the sculptural presence of ceremonial headdresses to the intricacy of hand-worked fibres, each piece reflects a deep connection to heritage, material, and form.
At its core, the exhibition highlights artists who honour ancestral knowledge while extending its language into the present. Their practices move between tradition and reinvention, where adornment becomes both a personal and cultural marker.
Ahwa’s curatorial approach draws on more than two decades in fashion editing and creative direction, where he has consistently championed independent makers and explored the intersection of art and dress. His earlier exhibition, Moana Currents: Dressing Aotearoa Now, co-curated with Doris de Pont, similarly foregrounded contemporary Pacific perspectives within Aotearoa’s cultural landscape.
This exhibition continues that trajectory, offering a considered platform for artists whose work reflects the evolving nature of identity, adornment, and cultural practice.