Kereama Taepa has exhibited nationally, internationally and has attended numerous hui and residencies over the years. He has works across various institutions, councils and notable collections, including the New Zealand Parliamentary collection. Taepa’s work primarily explores themes of digital culture - and how Māori can use technology to serve future generations.
Te Arawa, Te Āti Awa
Born in England in 1974, I studied Theatre Design: Costume Design at Wimbledon School of Art in London. We moved to New Zealand in 2011, and settled in Te Kōwhai, Waikato. I make life-size female figures. I enjoy making tough sculptures with local, natural materials. These are big, real women, taking up space. I also make paintings and ceramics.Recently, I have created my own programme of art workshops, which I have delivered across the age groups and in schools, sculpture parks and libraries.
Barbara Kristine Wheeler’s textile sculptures, embroideries and baskets combine storytelling and humour. Kristine is a solar punk crone, using materials-led methodologies to bring waste textiles and fibres back into usefulness, re-contextualising meaning and value, inviting personal connections and delight. These approaches anchor her practice in optimistic opposition to the ‘take, make, waste’ global model of consumption. Her home base and studio has been in Wellington New Zealand since 2019, but for the next few years she is travelling in Australia and Europe.
Susan is a multi-media visual artist who’s practice celebrates authentic creative process as a means of revealing the unconscious through playful manipulation of a wide range of materials from bronze, plasticine, wax, clay, wood, yarn, paper, hard-candy, and now flowers. She has trained at the Valerie Skemp Decorative Arts Studio (Canada), The Vancouver Academy of Art (Canada), The Otago Polytechnic School of Art (Dunedin), Whitecliffe College of Art and Design (Auckland), and Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.
Through large-scale geometric fabric sculptures of endangered and extinct animals and birds, Anya Whitlock merges her techniques and tricks working for many years on Films with artistic vision. Exploring neuroplasticity's interplay with memory, her works evoke contemplation on how past experiences shape present perceptions. Each piece becomes a poignant reminder of humanity's interconnectedness with nature and the urgent need for preservation.
Laurette Madden-Morehu — Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Ngāti Porou. When Laurette saw a kete as a seven-year-old girl, it sparked a life-long interest in the art of weaving. “Learning the whakapapa of our mahi raranga, as well as the various techniques, gave me an amazing sense of connection to my own whakapapa, and to the tupuna who created this mahi.” Laurette finds the inspiration and aspiration to weave from her late mother and grandmother. The process of weaving is the continued connection from her to them, and to all the other weavers that inspire her.
Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga A Māhaki
Simi (Simone) Paris — Ngapuhi. A kaiako for the past 12 years at Te Wananga o Aotearoa in Kirikiriroa, Simi’s artist perspective is driven by kaupapa and relevance and is strongly influenced by the relationship between the representation of Māori in art forms and their visual narrative.
“Māori values and strategies are a vital part of determining how particular principles or ways of being and doing inform contemporary and traditional Māori Art.”
Simi is continuously inspired by the skills of her Tupuna (ancestors) and the Taha Wairua (spiritual aspects) that are intrinsic to Toi Māori
Me Atawhai Te Taha Wairua o Te Ora Me Te Taha Tinana Ano Hoki
Nurture the Spiritual as well as the Physical
Lives and works in Auckland. Chris Moore is a visual artist with over twenty years of experience and an expansive repertoire of technical skills to show for it, including in design, oil painting and portraiture, and blacksmithing and bronze casting. His studies in the traditional methods of the latter two took him to Europe for several years, after which he returned to New Zealand and set up a studio space in Oratia, West Auckland. Bringing the metals to life via an intensive process of forging, heating and shaping motivate Moore’s work, with which he aims to bring an unexpected lightness and texture to the material. He has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and has a number of large scale Public works in Auckland as well as many in Private collections
Pearce completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Sculpture at Wanganui Quay School of Fine Arts in 2003. Pearce won the Moly Morpeth sculpture award in 2014, the No.8 Wire award in 2016 and the Colin Post Four Plinth commission in 2022. Recently he was selected as the first ARA recipient which supports artists for a year to focus on practice.
Ben's works are monolithic, angular, minimalist and brutalist. Rather than feeling industrial, however, they feel like handwork, human, personal and individual. The emergent properties of their personality and softness become apparent on closer sustained viewing. Their monumentality is a kind of vanitas urging us to consider our own smallness and vulnerability as they loom gigantic overhead.
Paul Darragh lives and works as an artist based in Mount Maunganui, Paul's painting practice traverses both traditional canvases and large-scale outdoor paintings in public spaces. Darragh’s artwork is characterised by flat, graphic compositions that employ precise rendering to create a dynamic visual experience. Bold colours are paired in unexpected ways to create a sense of vibrancy and movement.
Wanda Gillespie is a contemporary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. Gillespie has established a unique practice centred on the form of the abacus. With her bespoke interpretations of this ancient counting instrument, she explores systems of value and how, within them, the material and the sacred become entwined.
Kirsten Strom is a young composer, conductor and creative writer. From a life-changing encounter with God as a child, she is drawn to sacred works and the creative use of spatial design. Her music has been performed internationally and aired on radio in her native New Zealand. Soli Deo Gloria.
Sarah Bing builds large figurative ceramic sculptures imbued with a sense of frivolity through her bold use of colour and pattern. Born in Napier in 1986, she is of European, Chinese and Māori descent. Currently living in Whaingaroa, Raglan. Her work is found in private collections around New Zealand.
Te Rongo's art practice draws inspiration from and explores her Māori (Waikato, Taranaki, Te Wai-o-Hua, Te Kawerau, Ngāi Tai ki Tamaki), Scottish, and English ancestry. Her work conveys tales of the land and sea (whenua), the ancestors (tupuna) and the existential links between all things (whakapapa).
Waikato Tainui, Taranaki, Te Wai-o-Hua, Te Kawerau, Ngāi Tai ki Tamaki iwi
Sculptor Natalie Guy lives and works in Auckland. Her work has been exhibited widely including at Te Tuhi Auckland, Tauranga Art Gallery, Scape Public Art Christchurch, and Sculpture on the Gulf Waiheke. In 2022 she completed a doctorate at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland. She works across many mediums and has a particular interest in the legacy of mid-century modernism and memories of the stylistic cues inherent in architecture and art that can be engaged and defamiliarised through sculptural objects.
Ngāpuhi, Ngāruahine
Peata Larkin (b. Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand) graduated with a Master of Fine Art from RMIT, Melbourne in 2009, after receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland (2004). Peata Larkin’s work operates in a space between binary constructions – Māori/Pākehā, past/present, art/science, matter/spirit – weaving cultures and spheres of knowledge together into new hybrid forms. In 2018, Larkin was the recipient of the Kaipara Wallace Arts Trust Award Residency at Altes Spital in Solothurn, Switzerland and awarded the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award in 2006. In 2013, Larkin completed the large-scale commission, Piki Ake – Rise Up, for the ANZ Tower in Auckland’s central business district. Following the success of this project Larkin has received consistent public and private commissions including Westgate, Newmarket (2018), Park Hyatt, Wynyard Quarter (2019) and a new large-scale commission for the International Conference Centre, Auckland, due to open in late 2019. Recent exhibitions include, Tauhere, Auckland Arts Festival, Silo 6, Wynyard Quarter, Auckland (2018), Auau_I Repeat, Pataka Art and Museum (2016), Ngā aho tāruarua, Corban Estate Arts Centre (2016). Her work is held in the collections of Memphis Museum of Fine Arts, USA, Rotorua Museum Arts Trust, Pataka Art + Museum, Waikato University and Massey University.
Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tūwharetoa
Dale Cotton Dale Cotton was born in Christchurch and currently resides at Nine Mile Beach Te Tai Poutini, New Zealand. He graduated from the SAE Institute Sydney in 1992 with a Diploma in audio engineering, and from Otago University in 2018 with a Master in Music. He is a practicing artist and full-time media professional with many New Zealand music awards to his name. Cotton works within the context of contemporary sound and light composition, electroacoustic art, data sonification/cultural analytics, production design and management. He began working seriously with media arts during a master's degree in analysis and electroacoustic composition. His inspiration comes from the history of music and visual art as well as the immediate matter of the world around us, the way they behave, the way they are generated, and by systems and data and the traces that those systems and data reveal. These interests have lead his work into worlds of cutting-edge technologies, new media and sonification. Binding together these inspirations is an overarching search for the new art and the way it can touch and inform the viewer and listener. Key Works: City Of Ghosts - Hue Vietnam, 2020 50 Min Video with Stereo soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UonrSrTpCxo Sound Works: Acousmatic works can be listened to here: https://soundcloud.com/d-cotton-aotearoa Commercial works can be watched here: https://audioworkshop.tumblr.com Related New Zealand music awards Best Pacific Language Album 2011, Best Folk Music Album 2005/2008 (twice) Electronic Album of the Year 2003, Producer of the Year 1998/1999 (twice).
While maintaining individual practices, Gina Ferguson and Dale Cotton have been collaborating over the last 3 years. Gina Ferguson was born in Christchurch and currently resides in Auckland, New Zealand. She graduated with a BFA from Canterbury University in 1990, majoring in sculpture and an MFA from RMIT (Melbourne, Australia) in 1999. She is a practicing artist and full time tenured Senior Lecturer and Curator in the Department of Design and Contemporary Arts at Unitec | Te Pūkenga, Auckland, New Zealand. She has exhibited in both New Zealand and Australia. She has been a selected finalist in national art awards, exhibited in numerous major national sculpture trails and has work in collections within New Zealand. Gina primarily works within the context of sculpture/installation and is also involved in a wider range of art and craft practices. She is interested in notions of the body, abjection, place, space, and experience. The implications surrounding our environment, uncertainty and resulting instability are primary discussions informing her art practice. Installations are site responsive and often temporal; they typically involve audience participation enabling a deeper reading as the nature and surface of the work changes over time. Interactive and textural in form, her work draws upon the connotations that are evoked by materiality, site, and the senses (sound, touch, smell etc). This experience instigates embodied memory when the viewer encounters the work, establishing an opportunity for contemplation regarding the environment and a discussion of self in relation to otherness as central to the precariousness of our place and time. Key outdoor sculpture exhibitions Sculpture in the Botanic Gardens, Auckland Botanical Gardens, Auckland, New Zealand, 2019/20 NZ Sculpture onShore, Fort Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012 Harbourview Sculpture Trail, Te Atatu Peninsula, Auckland, New Zealand, 2016 Headland: Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke Island, New Zealand, 2013, 2011 Shapeshifter, Civic Gardens, Wellington, New Zealand, 2012.
Salome Tanuvasa is a New Zealand artist of Tongan and Samoan descent. Her work is part of the permanent collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She is a multi-disciplinary artist and uses moving image, drawing, photography and sculpture.
Stuart Bridson’s art practice is about presenting obscure philosophical notions through light-hearted sculptural concepts. Stuart was awarded a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury and has exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions throughout New Zealand.
Inspired by the ancient monuments of her Cornish homeland, Moselen’s sculptures explore both the physicality and symbolism of duality. The elegant forms sculpted entirely by the artist examine light and shadow, softness and strength, masculine and feminine. Moselen completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Metalcraft and Jewellery Design before moving to Aotearoa in 1998. Moselen has exhbited in the UK and Aotearoa and her work is held in several private collections nationally and internationally. She is currently an artist in residence at Corban Estate Arts Centre.
There are all sorts of things that give artists the impetus to make work, stuff is all around me in visual and tactile forms. My career has been driven by abstract foundations, I search for things that create opportunities to explore gravity, colour comparisons and conceptual questions. By using materials that transform and react with each other I can create surfaces that push and pull and define my ambiguous, intuitive process.
The creation of each work is a journey within itself: materials are important. The viewer is always part of conversation being asked questions. I allow my works story to unfold as it may, through the dispersal of internal energy into physical and visual imagery.
Molly Mullen is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Waipapa Taumata Rau | the University of Auckland. Her research explores the relationships between participatory arts, economy, ecology and place. She is co-editor of Research in Drama Education (RiDE): The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.
Becca Wood has been working in live art that intersects choreography, spatial and digital environments for more than 25 years. Philosophies of the body, place, listening and how humans meet the world are a focus. Becca is a Senior Lecturer at Te Pūkenga, Unitec - Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka.
Louise McRae has a fluid art and spatial sculpture practice encompassing many areas of the material world. An alchemist of materials, she transforms one form into another unexpected form, bringing a sense of wonder, intrigue, and hope. Working full time from her Pakiri studio, Louise has over 20 years experience making and exhibiting. Completing a MFA from Whitecliffe College of Art & Design in 2016, she won the WSA small sculpture prize in 2023
Antoinette completed her Master of Arts at The School of Media Arts in 2011, adding ethical taxidermy to her practice in 2015. Along with being an exhibiting artist, she also works on taxidermy in an art conservator role for art collectors and museums. Antoinette’s taxidermy is held in collections around the world.
Claire Ulenberg is an experienced art curator, Fine Art Specialist and Consultant. She has been actively involved in the visual arts for over 20 years. She has a Masters of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne, where she also worked at the Victorian College of the Arts. Claire has worked in various dealer and not for profit galleries in Australia, Aotearoa and Italy (Venezia Biennale).
