Nicola Farquhar’s paintings metabolise the world, processing everything around us into a vibrant composition. Her teeming, pulpy surfaces can look like animals, fruit, organs, plants and other planets. In Birds, a striped form pours downward and is reabsorbed into the background. There is a sense of reproductive possibility within the work, as each part seems to synthesise with another and feed back into the whole; wiggling lines and loose shapes suggest something cellular might be taking place. Farquhar’s interest in science fiction offers new ways of thinking about how we relate to each other and to different species – how can we think carefully and urgently about being on Earth?

(Jane Wallace, 2023)

This engraving of an illustration by A. E. Chalon appears as 'The Maiiden's Chamber' in 'The Belle of a Season', an extended poem by Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessingham (1789 - 1849), published in 1840 by Longmans of London

It subsequently appeared as 'The Lover of Shakespeare' iin 'The People's Gallery of Engravings', second series, volume III, page 130, published by Peter Jackson, London.

The identity of the engraver is unknown.

Baye Riddell is a founding member of Ngā Kaihanga Uku – the Māori Clay Artists collective. He doesn’t use glazes in his ceramics, instead enhancing the clay with carved, painted or incised surfaces as a way of honouring the original material. The artist has whakapapa to Tokomaru Bay, where he also lives, and often uses clay collected from whānau land in Te Puia Springs. He says, “When I do that, I really feel connected to my tīpuna, because they’re providing me with a gift to work with.”

hui ~ gathering, meeting

whenua ~ land, earth

uku ~ clay

whakapapa ~ genealogy, lineage, ancestry

whānau ~ family, extended family, family group

tīpuna ~ ancestors

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)

Oliver Perkins has been investigating stretched and interlocking canvases for a number of years. In A music of a chance the scalpel becomes as important as the paintbrush in modifying the surfaces of two interlocked canvases. Parts are slit open and stretched taut as the canvases thread through each other and become one, intricately entwined. Other parts are cut away and disposed of entirely, leaving open views to the canvas beneath and the gallery wall beyond. Both foreground and background come into play and are equally important.

(Die Cuts and Derivations, 11 March – 2 July 2023)