Bodies are custom-built containers, but the bits of us other people see don’t always reflect what’s going on inside. The pantyhose limbs Sarah Lucas has coiled into this strangely human form wriggle away from easy interpretation. Sexy and provocative, they’re also powerful, carrying more than a trace of the striking Early Bronze Age figurines that inspired them.

(Dummies & Doppelgängers, 2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025)

Having studied design in Paris during the 1920s, French artist Louise Henderson settled in Ōtautahi Christchurch with her husband, Hubert, in 1925, where she quickly became a significant figure in Aotearoa’s growing modernist art circles. In the 1950s she moved to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland before returning to Paris to study under the cubist painter Jean Metzinger, who fostered her interest in the movement. Like so many painters during this period, Louise developed an interest in lithography. She produced numerous lithographs during the mid 1950s and beyond, including On Southern Cross, a cubist study of the engine plant she had seen on the recently launched Southern Cross ship.

Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern Era, 11 February – 28 May 2023

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)