These tins are part of an original grouping of 267, representing the number of whales killed by Japanese vessels in the 2010 Southern Ocean harvest before it was disrupted – by bad weather and the actions of the Sea Shepherd protest ship. They incorporate graphics from a real Japanese whale meat tin, adapted and superimposed over a photograph of the Southern Ocean, with the cut-out shape of a whale’s tail visible above the waves. Graham Bennett wanted to provoke debate; acknowledging both the range of perspectives that exist on this subject in Japan, and Aotearoa New Zealand’s own history of whaling.

(Te Wheke, 2020)

Juliet Peter was born into a farming family in Waitaha Canterbury and spent her childhood at Anama station near Te Kiekie Mount Somers. Preparing to sit her final exams at the Canterbury College School of Art, Peter’s artistic aspirations were temporarily sidelined by the outbreak of World War II. New Zealand’s support of the war effort was all-encompassing, and in 1942 she began work as a ‘land girl’, replacing male farmworkers serving overseas. While employed at Rydal Downs in Ōkūkū, she and her co-workers took up tractor driving, ploughing, harvesting, mustering, shearing and wool sorting. It was hard, physical work with long hours, six days a week throughout the year. Her years on the farm returned her to early and happy memories of rural life, and she documented her time at Rydal Downs through a series of paintings and sketches.

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