After two and a half years in Europe, including a year at the Slade School of Art in London, Olivia Spencer Bower returned to New Zealand in December 1931. While her childhood had been in England, most of her teen years and young adulthood were in Christchurch, where she’d studied at the Canterbury College School of Art. Following her return, she lived with her brother and parents at Claxby, a sheep farm near Swannanoa on the Canterbury plains, established by her maternal grandfather in 1853. Claxby became her home base for the next eleven years.

(Beneath the ranges, 18 February – 23 October 2017)