Works on Paper Booths to See at Aotearoa Art Fair 2026
In the Works on Paper sector, a selection of galleries present works on paper that highlight the medium’s versatility – from meticulous drawing and fine art screen printing to sculptural fibre works and experimental printmaking. Across these presentations, paper becomes both material and concept: a surface for storytelling, an archive of process. The sector also offers one of the most accessible entry points for new collectors, with works to suit a wide range of budgets.
Discover the galleries presenting in the Works on Paper sector at the Fair.
Artrite Screen Printing
Artrite Screen Printing celebrates the artistry, craftsmanship, and collaborative spirit behind fine art screen printing. Their presentation highlights the skill, precision, and nuance involved in the process — an integral yet often unseen component of contemporary art practice in Aotearoa.
Artrite aims to deepen public understanding of the elements that define screen printing as a fine art form, raising awareness of its cultural and artistic significance. A key feature of the booth will be the presence of Artrite Director Glenn Taylor, who will discuss the complexities of screen printing and demonstrate why it remains a fundamental and enduring part of an artist’s career. Through this dialogue, audiences gain insight into the screen printing process and its role within contemporary practice.
Artists:
Michael Smither
Dagmar Dyck
Matt Payne
Sam Leitch
Brad Novak
Image Credit: Michael Smither, 3 Rock Pools and Lava Flow, 2025.
CBD Gallery (Sydney)
In an increasingly digitised world, artists are turning to shared experiences and everyday surroundings, embedding the familiar within their practices as a response to visual saturation and technological overload. Many return to the tactile and personal, using the banal to reframe a sense of control.
Central to this shift is paper, which emerges as both medium and concept, evoking the sacredness of the ordinary. CBD Gallery’s Paper booth brings together diverse practices: from Junko Hagiwara’s lyrical suburban scenes and Martin Claydon’s surreal animations of the inanimate, to Tracey Jones’s composed still lifes, Brooke Marchel’s painted book surfaces, and Boris Toucas’ meticulous biro journals.
Across these works, paper is treated as a sculptural, allegorical, and experimental material. Through layering, manipulation, and transformation, these practices highlight paper’s texture, fragility, and sensory presence, reaffirming the enduring value of the physical in a digital age.
Artists:
Martin Claydon
Junko Hagiwara
Tracey Jones
Brooke Marchel
Boris Toucas
Image Credit: Tracey Jones, Lightly Concealed, 2026.
Parker Contemporary (Brisbane)
PARKER Contemporary presents a curated selection of works by emerging and established artists Daniel Clifford, Melissa J Harvey, Claudia Husband, Tim Mosely, and Alethea Richter.
Unified by a focus on material and process, these works respond to elemental forces and ecological experience, emphasising perception and material intelligence. The artists employ carving, layering, pulping, spraying, and casting to record time, touch, and pressure, revitalising traditional print and paper techniques through contemporary practice.
Landscapes appear not as depictions but as accumulations: exploded bronze leaves its trace, mezzotint rocks shift like cloud, and fibres strain between sight and touch. The works move between abstraction and figuration, where material intelligence leads the image.
This presentation includes newly created works by Tim Mosely, a leader in haptic aesthetics and artists’ books in Australia, whose landscapes continue his engagement with wilderness and tactile perception. Alethea Richter, a recent First Class Honours graduate of the Queensland College of Art and Design, exhibits in New Zealand for the first time, introducing her practice to a trans-Tasman audience.
New Zealand-born artist Daniel Clifford, now based in Australia, returns to exhibit works responding directly to his upbringing in Aotearoa and his relationship with the shifting landscape beneath his feet.
Artists:
Daniel Clifford
Alethea Richter
Melissa J Harvey
Tim Mosely
Claudia Husband
Image Credit: Alethea Richter, Filtered Light II, 2024
PAULNACHE (Gisbourne)
Image Credit: James Ormsby, 2024
PINKWOOD (Christchurch)
PINKWOOD is a dynamic urban art space dedicated to showcasing contemporary creative practices and fostering community. Through a programme of exhibitions by guest artists, the Christchurch-based gallery opens its space to new voices, ideas, and ways of making.
At this year’s Fair, PINKWOOD presents printmaker Ben Reid, whose work explores New Zealand’s ecological and environmental histories. Reid’s practice often depicts narratives around forest destruction, habitat loss, and the extinction of native species. The delicate storytelling within his work is closely tied to traditional printmaking techniques, which reinforce the themes embedded in his imagery.
Artist:
Ben Reid
Image Credit: Ben Reid, The Midnight Club, 2025.
Plomacy (Auckland)
Plomacy is an experimental gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland that champions contemporary art, media, and independent publications through a focused, perspective-driven programme.
Their works-on-paper presentation features drawings by Ashleigh Taupaki, extending her ongoing investigation into language, power, and replication. Produced within a live lecture context, the works emerge from the artist’s close reading of legislative texts, where racially driven language is uncovered, isolated, and reworked through drawing.
Taupaki examines the visual structure of these documents, particularly the Roman numerals used to quantify and assign land, treating them as pictorial forms rather than neutral markers. A recipient of Creative New Zealand’s Ngā Manu Pīrere Award (2020), Taupaki’s work foregrounds how systems of writing and numbering carry histories of control, erasure, and translation.
The works presented emphasise drawing as both repetition and resistance, where meaning is destabilised through careful, sustained looking.
Image Credit: Ashleigh Taupaki, SELF, LANGUAGE, WORLD, 2025.
REDBASE (Sydney / Melbourne / Yogyakarta)
REDBASE Art operates across Sydney, Melbourne, and Yogyakarta, presenting cross-cultural perspectives on contemporary art in the Indo-Pacific.
Their presentation brings together significant works by six international artists whose practices reveal the intricate techniques and material origins behind their works on paper and related media.
German artist Stephan Kaluza paints hyper-real environmental landscapes, while Chinese-Australian artist Shen Shaomin creates mechanical installations that explore the consequences of human desire and artificiality. Korean artist Cheolyu Kim produces intricate drawings inspired by his childhood near the Korean DMZ, forming dreamlike landscapes through precise, mechanical lines.
New Zealand artist Roger Mortimer constructs mythological categories through drawing, while Chinese artist Chen Gelin explores light through fibre-based works inspired by Guangxi textile traditions. Jin Sha innovates traditional Gongbi painting by combining classical Chinese precision with elements of Western contemporary art.
Stephan Kaluza, Transit, 2025
The Colin McCahon Trust
The Colin McCahon Trust presents its first authorised limited edition: Clouds 3 (1975/2024), an archival quality screen print in an edition of 100, available at the Fair.
Proceeds support the Colin McCahon Legacy Project, a major initiative to secure and expand McCahon’s catalogue raisonné. This free digital archive will feature new research and innovative functionality, documenting more than 1,850 artworks and over 500 exhibitions across the artist’s lifetime.
Colin McCahon (1919–1987) is widely regarded as one of Aotearoa’s foremost artists. Established in 1991, the Trust preserves his legacy by providing access to artworks, supporting research, managing copyright, and verifying authenticity.
Part of McCahon’s Clouds series, Clouds 3 is both beautiful and contemplative. The archival screen print preserves the painterly detail of the original, revealing subtle tonal shifts upon close viewing.
Trustee Finn McCahon-Jones, Colin’s grandson, selected the work as the Trust’s first edition:
“At the time this was painted, many of McCahon’s friends were getting old or dying, but also the first of his grandchildren was born. I see this as a painting about a life lived and life starting. I like the duality of the message in the paint.”
Image Credit: Colin McCahon, Clouds 3, 1975.
These solo booths offer a chance to spend time with the dynamic medium of paper, 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.