Art New Zealand

With the passing of Bill Milbank the many artists who interacted with him over the 27 years of his tenure as director of the Sarjeant Gallery have lost a loyal and inspiring colleague, and friend. Curatorially speaking, Bill came from the wrong side

Two Rooms, 6 October-4 November MICHAEL DUNN Geometric abstraction is a style of painting that has a relatively small but distinguished place in New Zealand contemporary practice. Its best-known local exponent is arguably the late Gordon Walters (191

What can be learnt from water? Cyclone Gabrielle brought its power to bear last year, inscribing the phrase ‘atmospheric rivers’ in our memories. Sea levels are rising, and as part of the Pacific Ocean, with one of the longest coastlines in the world

Auckland-based Toby Raine is a striking artist. Literally. He uses his paints to search for his subject, layers up the colours and then slaps them back as if it is some BDSM game of peek-a-boo. He says he works his pieces until they surprise him, and

Chris Booth is obviously exhausted after the completion in December of his latest work, Te Haa o Te Ao (The Breath of the World). This kinetic sculpture, sitting on land at the entrance to Kerikeri township, comprises 120 boulders suspended from a 15

Wharenui Harikoa comes from a shared epiphanous moment between lovers: Lissy and Rudi RobinsonCole’s manifestation of a love supreme in the form of a life-size crocheted wharenui (meeting house), a fluorescent woollen beacon transmitting joy to the w

From the 2002 Pasifika Festival at Western Springs in Auckland, I have an enduring memory. Sylvia Marsters, on a sweltering afternoon standing at her easel, is perched on a small rise, painting detailed delicate frangipani on a small canvas. They wer

Richard Lewer has described his work as a form of 'contemporary social realism' experimenting with the idea of the artist as something of a social and historical commentator. Lewer the artist is a type of social anthropologist—with all the complex co

It is a challenging time for our public art institutions, with galleries required to cater to vast audiences, whilst being judged on how many visitors they can get through the door in order to win funding. Add a culture war to the context of needing

Distress is a currency in common use in our times. Our mediated world serves up the survivors of war, plague and earthquake on a plate that seems to go unmerrily round and around. Academia, the fourth estate and even its victims are fluent in the voc

Otago Harbour (1978) is a work on paper by Joanna Margaret Paul in the Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, Dunedin. It is just over half a metre high, under a metre wide, in pencil and acrylic paint, with pasted-on paper carrying additional draw

In 1933 Elizabeth Kelly was described as New Zealand’s foremost woman portrait painter and compared to Laura Knight in Britain.1 So who was she and what did she and her husband Cecil Kelly bring to New Zealand art? Cecil and Elizabeth Kelly had caree

Dear Colin, Dear Ron: The Selected Letters of Colin McCahon and Ron O’Reilly by Peter Simpson Te Papa Press, Wellington 2024 MICHAEL DUNN Nobody has written more extensively on Colin McCahon in recent years than Peter Simpson. His landmark two-volume