Poet Charles Brasch described the distinctive Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland light Colin McCahon captured in his Titirangi paintings as airy and atmospheric, capable of dissolving the solid hills, forests and water into “a kind of brilliant prismatic dance”. McCahon lived in the Titirangi area between 1953 and 1959, and made numerous studies in the kauri forests of the Waitakere district, fascinated by how the sunlight streaming through the high, delicate canopy turned the kahere into a field of shimmering geometric forms. Here, the abstracted shapes of the forest rise up towards the fragmented sky, creating an effervescent play of warmth, movement and light.

kahere ~ forest

(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)

Australian artist Callum Morton is renowned for works that recast structures and building materials as repositories for human dreams and memories. Here, modern architecture’s humblest unit – the cinder-block – receives a rainbow paint-job that confuses and complicates its purpose. Are these the building blocks of a brighter future or the wistful relics of a destroyed utopia?

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

Works of art aren’t as well behaved as they used to be. Once upon a time, they stayed where they were put, hanging obediently off picture rails or perching politely on pedestals. Since the arrival of the Duchampian readymade, however, many require a second glance to distinguish them from the world around them, as everyday objects are pressed into service in new, perspective-tilting contexts. There’s another kind of work too, the type Glen Hayward is known for: the readymade’s stealthier cousin. Meticulously, even obsessively, crafted to resemble objects you wouldn’t give another glance, these unobtrusive double agents aim to blend in, adding a subversive frisson to the gallery experience.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

Made following the 2020/11 earthquakes, Shane Cotton’s painting crackles with a supernatural energy. It reveals a swirling, in-between space that recalls the Māori concept of te kore, the void, a realm of potential. Within a canvas full of trailing smoke, dust clouds and gleaming rainbows, physical matter and ideas collide, allowing for connections across time and space. Cotton includes a reference to a modernist carving by Northland artist Clive Arlidge, acknowledging how earlier generations of Māori artists contribute to the whakapapa (genealogy) of today’s artists. Part-ruin, part-vision, the work is charged with echoes of the recent and distant past – and full of anticipation about what may come next.

(Absence, May 2023)