At a time in her career when many might have expected her to slow down or even retire, French-born Louise Henderson embarked upon one of her most ambitious creative projects. The Twelve Months distilled her impressions of her life in Aotearoa New Zealand into a dozen tall canvases, filtering the rhythms of the year through her ‘abstract poetic of nature’. Borrowing their proportions from the elegant ‘double square’ of her studio windows, they combined two important aspects of her practice: the all-seeing viewpoints and organisational principles of cubism and the ability to use colour to evoke both form and atmosphere. Often inspired by the view through her window, Henderson manipulated a complex set of variables, considering how the seasons affected the weather and landscape, the changing light and position of the sun, and the fluctuating activities, rituals and moods of people in both the city and the countryside.

May has a very different aesthetic to the other Months, prompted by the artist’s glimpse of the moon rising over her back yard, huge and red in the dark late-autumn sky.

Tongan-born, Canberra-raised, Tāmaki Makaurau-based, Sione Monū works in video, performance, photography, fashion and adornment. Often using a cell phone, they produce works concerned with identity, gender and Tongan life. Monū’s prolific output in video is a mix of observation, improvisation and sampling. Expanding the selfie to a self-filming technique, they reveal Pasifika queer culture and aspects of modern Tongan family life.

This video work was commissioned especially for the exhibition Te Wheke. It is Monū’s response to the curatorial brief to conside migrations from Polynesia and the rest of the world to Aotearoa, from Aotearoa to Polynesia, and back out to the wider world again.

(Te Wheke, 2020)