“I came from the South Island, and the South Island I must mention! Yes your mountains still pile up in my thoughts! Your shorelines still run round the edges of the same. Big canoe of Maui, my little paddle will always be at your side.” —Tony Fomison, 1979 Te Waipounamu South Island always loomed large in Tony Fomison’s psyche, even after he made the shift north to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland from his hometown of Ōtautahi Christchurch in 1973. Drawn from memory and past experiences, the Waitaha Canterbury landscape continued as the subject of many of his paintings, including ‘Night Time, Amuri Bluff’. Fomison had developed a strong sense of the history of the land through his work as an assistant archaeologist for Canterbury Museum, where he researched early Māori settlements and whaling stations near Kaikōura and Horomaka Banks Peninsula – including the Māori settlement site Haumuri, also known as Amuri Bluff, on the Kaikōura coastline.

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