10 Solo Booths to See at Aotearoa Art Fair 2026
Solo booths at the Aotearoa Art Fair offer focused presentations with a deeper look at an individual artist’s practice.
From emerging creatives to internationally recognised names, these solo presentations offer a compelling cross-section of contemporary art across painting, sculpture, photography and installation.
Ruby Wilkinson
Presented by Jhana Millers Gallery, Wellington
Ruby Wilkinson’s paintings are shaped by movement, memory and the changing atmospheres of place. Drawing on her experiences of Wellington’s rugged coastline and recent time spent in Auckland, her works explore shifting light, expansive skies and the emotional resonance of landscape.
Her solo presentation, Belle Plaine, takes its title from a cargo ship the artist once encountered and later began tracking, thinking about journeys, passage and return. Across the booth, gestural marks and layered colour suggest flight, memory and homecoming, works that feel both immediate and quietly reflective.
Zuhu Ohmu
Presented by McLeavey Gallery, Wellington
Zhu Ohmu (b. 1991) was born in Taipei and moved to New Zealand as a child, where she attended Elam school of fine arts. She is currently based in Cité des Arts in Paris. Her work explores the tension between nature and technology. Over the past year in Paris, Zhu completed a three-month self-directed residency at POUSH and was awarded a five-month residency at Cité Internationale des Arts through the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has used this time to experiment and refine her practice: working with new French clay bodies, exploring modular construction and internal supports for her coiled vessels, and engaging with processes such as cyanotype and kintsugi. Recent conceptual developments include her phone tile works, reflecting distance from home, which were first shown at McLeavey Gallery in July 2025 and continue to evolve, now being explored in porcelain. She will return to New Zealand for the Aotearoa Art Fair at the end of April.
Rangi Kipa
Presented by Melanie Roger Gallery, Auckland
Arts Foundation Laureate Rangi Kipa presents new whale bone carvings alongside photographic works, continuing a practice that bridges customary Māori knowledge and contemporary expression.
Kipa is widely respected for work that re-imagines traditional materials and techniques while engaging deeply with cultural identity and place. His sculptures carry both physical and cultural weight, offering a powerful presence that connects past, present and future.
Judy Millar
Presented by Michael Lett, Auckland
Judy Millar is one of New Zealand’s most internationally recognised contemporary artists, celebrated for her bold paintings that push the boundaries of abstraction and the painted surface. Her work investigates the relationship between the physical act of painting and the viewer’s perceptual space, often playing with scale, repetition, and digital interventions.
Scott Perkins
Presented by Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin
See new work by acclaimed photographer, Scott Perkins, a Sydney/Eora based artist who was born in Auckland. In his newest collection, Scott Perkins creates a space beyond the visible, capturing the viewer’s imagination through serene, atmospheric qualities. Perkins orchestrates an elegant synthesis of photo-media and design elements, demonstrating innovation across printing, framing and lightbox presentation. His lightboxes introduce a sculptural dimension to his photographs, transforming the spaces they inhibit with considered lighting and exceptional materials, including crafted timber, handmade Japanese Washi and metallic Hanhnemühle papers. Grounded in abstract landscape photography, Perkins’s accomplished aesthetic amplifies the majesty of his sharply composed subject matter.
Areez Katki
Presented by Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland
Born in Mumbai (1989), Katki migrated to New Zealand as a child. He holds a BA in Art History and English, and an MA in Creative Writing. His work often draws on his Parsi heritage and queerness, working through embroidered textiles, sculpture, and language to explore memory, migration, and embodied histories.
A’aifou Potemani
Presented by Fresh Gallery Ōtara, Auckland
A’aifou Potemani’s work explores the intersections of Pacific knowledge and contemporary urban life. Beginning with photographs of everyday neighbourhoods, he transforms familiar scenes into intricate patterned compositions through screen printing and digital processes.
Grounded in themes of migration, belonging and community, his works offer a powerful reflection on identity and place within the Moana diaspora.
Mark Maurangi Carrol
Presented by Nasha Gallery, Sydney
Mark Maurangi Carrol’s paintings explore memory, diaspora and cultural identity, shaped by his upbringing between Australia and Rarotonga.
Using a distinctive reverse-painting technique informed by printmaking and Cook Islands textile traditions, Carrol creates layered works that reflect on place, migration and belonging. His paintings carry both personal and collective histories, unfolding through colour, pattern and surface.
Ashleigh Taupaki
Presented by Plomacy, Auckland
Ashleigh Taupaki’s drawings investigate language, systems of power and the visual structures of written documents. Working from legislative texts, she isolates and reworks fragments of language and numbering systems, transforming them into carefully composed drawings. Presented in the Works on Paper sector.
Her works foreground drawing as a method of repetition and resistance, inviting close attention and sustained looking.
Yona Lee
Presented by Fine Arts, Sydney
Yona Lee creates sculptural installations that combine stainless steel structures with materials drawn from domestic and urban environments. Her works often reshape space itself, guiding movement and altering how viewers experience architecture.
Having recently presented major projects across New Zealand, Australia and Korea, Lee’s sculptures continue to evolve in scale and ambition, creating environments that are both familiar and unexpected.
These solo booths offer a chance to spend time with an artist’s work in a focused and immersive way, one of the many reasons Aotearoa Art Fair is such a rewarding place to explore contemporary art.
Aotearoa Art Fair 2026 takes place from 30 April – 3 May at the Viaduct Events Centre, Auckland. First Release tickets are on sale now – buy online.