Christchurch-born Bill Sutton returned to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1949 after two years in England and Europe, where he had revelled in the art and architecture of ages past. Gaining new eyes for the distinct character of his homeland, and with a new ability to express this, he explored the region on his motorbike, often in the early morning before starting his teaching day at Canterbury College School of Art. Sutton found inspiration in the simple façades of weekend baches at Te Onepoto / Taylors Mistake, and their random, unblinking faces of concrete, tin and wood. They appear as symbols of the developing, yet provisional, settler-culture presence in this land.

(Te Wheke, 2020)