Ivy Fife was strongly drawn to line and structure. Her landscape works often include trains, gates, farm buildings and railway signals, and she painted large shipping crates stacked on train wagons at Lyttelton port. When her old flat in St Elmo Courts – a 1930s high rise that stood not far from here – was being remodelled, she seized the opportunity to record the process. Here, light floods through a space that bristles with exposed wooden framing, creating a composition full of sharp angles and shadows. This chaotic scene is watched over by the artist’s cat; a small reminder of the apartment’s previous life.

(Absence, May 2023)

In 2007, Edith Amituanai travelled to Europe to photograph New Zealand-Samoan professional rugby players who were based in France and Italy. She also took photographs in their family homes back in Aotearoa. This series is named Déjeuner, the French term for ‘lunch’, in recognition of the regular family get-togethers that one of the players claimed he was most homesick for. These photographs document what Amituanai describes as third-wave Pacific migration, as the relocation of the players to Europe was driven by the need to further their careers internationally.

The Manu Lounge was shot just prior to this, in 2006, in the home of Amituanai's Aunt Lomona in Spreydon, Christchurch. It shows the lounge laden with images and memorabilia of Carl Manu who was playing rugby in Grand Parma, Italy at the time. Shot from another angle and taken a year later, The House of Manu is part of the following Déjeuner series.

The two photographs show the same room, at first busy with family portraits and decorations, and then in a transitional stage as the family prepare to move house. Many objects have been removed –the display of photographs and mementos in front of the hearth – and one object wrapped in newspaper rests next to a packing tape dispenser. Together, they offer insight into how the idea of 'home' can evolve and shift between generations and circumstances, and how the domestic environments we piece together around us reflect our connections with the past, as well as our dreams for the future.

(Melanie Oliver, 2020)

John Henry Menzies first took up woodcarving as a youth in Lancashire, England. He immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand aged twenty-one in 1860, and began farming on Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū / Banks Peninsula in 1877. Menzies’ interest in Māori art began in about 1882. He is unlikely to have encountered whakairo (carving) and kōwhaiwhai (rafter patterns) as living traditions until visiting Ōhinemutu in Rotorua five years later. Captivated by what he felt were endangered art forms, he filled two of three houses he built at Kiri-kiri-wairea / McIntosh Bay (later Menzies Bay) and a church at Little Akaloa with extraordinary Māori-inspired furniture and decoration. His most spectacular pieces were made for family members – this highly decorative pātaka cabinet was made for his daughter Charlotte and her husband Edwin Stanford.

(Te Wheke, 2020)