Exhibitions

The Huia & our Tears

Ray Ching 22 October - 10 November 2024 “Huia are difficult birds to paint. They are difficult because neither you nor I have seen these birds foraging about the forest floor with their beautiful ivory-coloured beaks and can’t just exactly know of their movements. Perhaps above all, they are made difficult to paint because huia are so very... Read more

Elizabeth Rees & Matthew Williams

24 September - 7 October 2024 Read more

PLAIN SONG

Works on Paper 3 - 16 September 2024 Read more

Savour

Nicola Bennett 13 - 26 August 2024 Read more

Rob Tucker

HOMECOMING 25 June - 9 July 2024 Read more

FATU FEU'U

Vai Manino 28 May - 9 June 2024 ARTIS Gallery presents Fatu Feu's Vai Manino - a body of work encompassing the conservation and the impacts of climate change on the Pacific Region. Feu'u is an internationally recognised Samoan-New Zealand artist, who has been pivotal in shaping the interest in contemporary Pacific art as well as nurturing a... Read more

Aotearoa Art Fair 2024

17 - 22 April 2024 Read more

Michael Smither - SONG

Harmonic Series | 26 March - 8 April 2024 Read more

John Blackburn

REMINISCE 27 February - 10 March 2024 Read more

Bridget Bidwill & Bronwynne Cornish

27 November - 17 December 2023 Read more

Pamela Wolfe

The Entangled Bank 6 - 26 November 2023 'It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon... Read more

Bruce Hunt

Manmade 14 August - 3 September 2023 Bruce Hunt's epic depictions of Otago and South Canterbury landscapes encompass a powerful authority. The work demands the viewer to sweep their eye over what appear to be seemingly endless sinewy vistas. Hunt explores the history, geology and myth that envelops the vast empty tussock-clad hills and arid plains of the Lindis, Danseys Pass and Dunstan Trail regions.

Masterfully, Hunt captures the subtle play of light and consequent shadow. The muscular geology of the land seems clothed in folds of soft velvet as he layers translucent paint in warm shades over cool to produce an inner radiance.
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Fiona Garlick + Aroha Gossage

Off Balance + Kōkōwai 24 July - 13 August 2023 This exhibition features new work from two of our represented artists Fiona Garlick and Aroha Gossage. Fiona's bronze sculptures are mainly focused on a postcolonial landscape and the tensions between introduced and native fauna within New Zealand. Aroha's paintings utilize the technique of mixing kōkōwai, a red clay, with oil paint which she collects from her hometown of Pakiri. Read more

George Savill

Arrangement 22 May - 11 June 2023 George Savill’s paintings are a testament to the beauty and impermanence of life – he celebrates the ephemeral nature of his subjects. His works reminds us that life is not meant to be contained within the boundaries of a frame and his rich colours and expressive brushstrokes evoke the mood of expressionism. Read more

George Baloghy

Urban Pastoral 2 - 21 May 2023 In this exhibition Baloghy focuses on the beauty and interplay between the built environment, the natural landscape and the harbour. It is done with the familiar eye of someone who knows the area intimately and whose personal life has evolved to the rhythm and pulse of the city. Baloghy has painted Auckland over many decades, recording its changes over time. New apartments and towers pop up and one could regard these paintings as a record of the evolution of Auckland. They are actually more than that – they are the story of an artist’s lifelong romance with his city. Read more

MANZ - Medal Art New Zealand

Our Nature 14 March - 3 April 2023 ARTIS Gallery is the host gallery for Medal Art New Zealand (MANZ) – a group of New Zealand’s leading contemporary sculptors. This 2023 biennial exhibition has thirty artists presenting medals and /or small sculptures. Read more

Aotearoa Art Fair 2023

STAND A5 2 - 5 March 2023 ARTIS Gallery returned Aotearoa Art Fair on Thursday 2 - Sunday 5 March at The Cloud on Tāmaki Makaurau Queens Wharf. Located at Booth A5 the Gallery featured two distinct instalments over the course of the Fair. During the opening two days, we exhibited new works from Liam Barr, Nigel Brown, John Edgar, Fatu Feu'u, Hamish Foote, Andy Leleisi'uao, Peter Panyoczki, Ann Robinson, and Terry Stringer. Read more

John Blackburn

90 Years 14 - 27 February 2023 In June 2022 we celebrated the milestone of John’s 90th birthday and four months ago he sent us a collection of stunning new paintings for his 2023 exhibition. It was whilst those paintings were at the framers in preparation for this exhibition that we received the sad news of John’s passing on October 22nd. Since 2009 John has been a massive supporter of ARTIS Gallery and a valued mentor to our younger artists. We have formed a strong personal friendship with John and Maude. John’s elegant presence at his exhibition openings will be sorely missed. As John said to me in 2017, ‘there’s no point in simply doing what you already know; the important thing is to search for what you don’t know’. Read more

Aotearoa Art Fair 2022

STAND A5 16 - 20 November 2022 ARTIS Gallery presented three exhibitions over the course of five days at the Aotearoa Art Fair. New Zealand’s premier showcase for contemporary art, held on Wed 16 – Sun 20 Nov 2022 at The Cloud on Auckland’s Queens Wharf. For the Opening Night, Wednesday 16 November, and the first public day on Thursday, 17 November, the Gallery presented works from the estates of John Edgar & Llew Summers. Pivotal works owned by both artists have been made available by the their families to be exhibited on the ARTIS Gallery stand (A5).
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Fatu Feu'u

Abundance 18 October - 10 November 2022 For forty years Fatu Feu’u has been the central figure of the contemporary Pacific art movement in Aotearoa New Zealand. Feu’u’s influence has been outstanding at both the national and international level and has been no less remarkable in his nurturance and encouragement of artists evolving symbolic languages in the... Read more

Elizabeth Rees & Marté Szirmay

The Backroad & Earthlight 13 September - 2 October 2022 Elizabeth Rees has been exhibiting with ARTIS Gallery since 2011. Her work explores the relationship between the body, the mind and the environment in which we exist. This collection of new oil paintings by Elizabeth Rees marks the beginning of a new studio and lifestyle in the Bay of Islands. Fascinated by people from all walks of life in her Northland community, Rees began to assemble her impressions and visual notes on the colours, vegetation and pace of life in her new environment. Marté Szirmay has long been regarded as one of New Zealand’s most accomplished artists. Her work is represented in private and public collections in New Zealand and abroad. Creating sculptures for Marté is about creating a language of signs and symbols that transcend regional, cultural and social limitations. This new series of bronze works pays tribute to our Sun. Read more

Nigel Brown

Cells of Human 23 August - 11 September 2022 Long recognised as an expert on 'we Pākehā' and what makes us tick, Nigel Brown has been described as a magpie. And so it is in this exhibition, 'Cells of Human'. As in so many other of his exhibitions he not only draws on a wide range of genres and colours, but focuses on the boundaries we create to manage our world. Film, literature, comics, pop art, occasional echoes of Māori design - all are grist to his mill. He also cross-references himself and others, re-investigates, and revisits, conscious always of the complicated relationship between words, the things they purport to describe, and the visual world of planes, colours and dimensions. Sign, signified, and signifier are interrogated together. He has always been interested in change both in our world and in the past, which is how I first became interested in his work. In this exhibition change is at the forefront. Read more

Jim Wheeler

Following Nature 2 - 22 August 2022 At the root of Jim Wheeler’s practice is his adoration for the earth. This sculptor’s forty year practice has been spent in service to Venus and Mother Nature. Standing at their altars, the artist pays homage to the Aotearoa terrain through sculpture. Wheeler acts as a student of the forest,... Read more

Pamela Wolfe

Transplant 21 June - 10 July 2022 In the first instance, ‘Transplant’ refers to the activities of early botanists, such as Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, who sailed on Cook’s Endeavour and collected exotic species previously unknown to Europe. At the same time the establishment of botanical gardens promoted scientific understanding and enabled the public to experience at first-hand, the wonderment and diversity of nature. ‘Transplant’ also refers to my moving house and, after 38 years, having to establish a new garden and studio. On this occasion I created a small urban meadow of randomly scattered wildflowers. The resulting blooms have attracted bees, butterflies and other insects, continuing the natural cycle and adding further to the enjoyment of our flora and fauna. Read more

Brendan Burns

Aotearoa - A Brighter Light 31 May - 19 June 2022 Brendan Burns came to New Zealand from Wales in 2020 to complete a 9 week residency at Earthskin in Piha, Auckland. This residency was to conclude with an exhibition in ARTIS Gallery in April of that year. However, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 Brendan had to immediately return to Wales prior to New Zealand lockdown in March 2020. “Artists consistently talk about ‘light’. Indeed, it has always been important within my paintings; the interplay between reflected and refracted light which helps the ambiguous relationships of the figurative and abstract, microcosm and macrocosm. Light which helps define the difference between pictorial space and sensory space; colour as materiality in its reference juxtaposed with colour as sensation and emotion.” Read more

Liam Barr

Out of Kilter 10 - 29 May 2022 At the time of making, I often feel separate from the work, trusting and allowing the process to unfold, not always knowing exactly what is being said, but once complete and on reflection, a narrative reveals itself. To me, this is the creative process at its best.

‘Out of Kilter’ is a body of work which reflect what Covid ‘19 threw us into. There is a feeling of unsettled turmoil and intersecting ideas which formulate a collection of works as opposed to a series of similar themed works. While we couldn’t be in a more grounded country to endure such a pandemic, nevertheless, we weren’t quite sure what the future would hold. This imbalance pushed and pulled the work yet somehow managed to symbolize an image set depicting personal reflection, historical meanderings and a subtle reminder that those we hold dear are everything.
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Peter Panyoczki

RE-FLECTIONS - DISTANT, MEMORIES, PRESENT 12 April - 2 May 2022 “In August 2021, I couldn’t exhibit my work RE-FLECTIONS, due to the Covid lockdown. I made a statement then:
“ We live in a strange world that has turned our way of life upside down”. Since then even more sadly, absurd and surreal events have perpetuated worldwide. I complemented a few more works to actualize the status quo of my show. The essence and the topic of my exhibition however are the same. I am talking about the distant memories, not just those, which are piled up onto the crust of our personal psyche, but are also reminiscent in the sediment of our human history. We are elements of the chain that is forming us. In this exhibition I combine works, that can be sawn into a multifaceted narrative, always under the guidance of: “I know that I don’t know”
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John Blackburn & Margaret Lovell

An Unbroken Duality 8 - 24 February 2022 Art is often a barometer of its time, and the fraught conditions of recent years have informed the content and mood of the work of many artists, including that of the two veteran British abstractionists shown in this exhibition. In her adopted country of New Zealand, sculptor Margaret Lovell reacted to global uncertainties with what she came to realise was a subconscious need to simplify, to pare down her forms in a meditative process in which clarity and strength were constant watchwords. In contrast, during sustained periods of lockdown in both Auckland and at his English home, John Blackburn, always a highly physical painter, felt impelled to work with even greater rawness and immediacy. On the face of it then, divergent energies appear to be operating here, though in fact a closer examination reveals that these artists have much in common.
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Andy Leleisi'uao

An Uncanny Catharsis of Unrequited Bones 30 November - 20 December 2021 The whole series, engraved in our memory as one large work, reads itself as an ever-moving procession, an organised ceremony in which beings look for meaningful connections without manifestations of power and wealth. So the artist recognizes that our being human is invested not simply in our existence as individuals, but also in our collective existence as social beings. Our ability to rise above our individual physical selves and to see ourselves as part of a larger project, to project onto the world, and onto human life, a purpose that exists only because we as human beings create it Read more

Michael Smither

Here & Now 9 - 29 November 2021 In these uncertain times it is a gift when some things stay the same. Ever since his first exhibition in Auckland almost exactly 60 years ago, Michael Smither has confronted his viewers with surprises, sometimes shocks, always a search and scrutiny of his singular way of looking at the world. True to his best form, he has done it again with Here and Now, this exhibition of 10 paintings. “These are the paintings of my old age,” says Smither. “I think now I have truly earned my name: Smither; it means an ordinary working man.”
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Ray Ching

Fabled Lands Exhibition & Book Launch 14 September - 3 October 2021 FABLED LANDS is a limited edition book by artist Ray Ching. Containing the artist’s own selection of paintings and drawings spanning more than 50 years, and accompanied by his own hand-scripted commentaries, this book is limited to 150 copies, each with its own individually numbered and signed bookplate. The exhibition, displayed across both ARTIS Gallery & Jonathan Grant Gallery, included works from the past 25 years of the artist’s career as well as a selection of new limited edition prints. Read more

Nicky Foreman

Shadow Passes - Light Remains 3 - 22 August 2021 Nicky Foreman was born in Waitara, Taranaki in 1970. She attended Elam School of Fine Arts Auckland University 1988 – 1991 and graduated BFA 1992. First exhibiting in Auckland and New Plymouth in 1992, Foreman has exhibited regularly in Auckland, New Plymouth and Christchurch ever since. From the onset, she has worked in a compartmentalized format. Foreman’s work can be viewed twofold – in small icon-like pieces and as the whole. Her work is concerned with taking everyday objects and resetting them, so they might be viewed in a difference context – as precious and beautiful. Within this method of working Foreman plays off order against chaos, and abstract against figurative. Foreman uses oil paint with an assemblage of other materials. She manipulates her materials and invents for herself new techniques that evolve through her everyday practice, giving a sense of alchemy to her artwork. Using gold, silver and copper leaf, wax, inks and shellacs, she engenders tactile historical surfaces. Read more

Bruce Hunt

The Smell of Rain 22 June - 11 July 2021 Bruce Hunt’s depictions of the New Zealand landscape have the immediate hallmarks of topographical accuracy while also evoking the unmistakable essential moods, atmospheres and interlocking structures which make it so extraordinary and distinctive. The Smell of Rain is a title that, for the artist, suggests not only at the elemental things; weather and storms, the feeling of sun and wind, but of nostalgia, the inevitability of change and memories of youth. Read more

Bridget Bidwill + Bronwynne Cornish

Ex Amino 1 - 20 June 2021 Bronwynne Cornish’s approach towards her sculpture has earned her recognition and critical acclaim as a highly influential contributor to New Zealand ceramics and art education. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country, where she has had major shows in all New Zealand’s significant museums and galleries. Read more

MANZ - Medal Art New Zealand

A Place to Stand 30 March - 18 April 2021 This 2021 biennial exhibition has thirty-one artists presenting medals and /or small sculptures. A diversity is demonstrated in the works that make up this exhibition and is also reflective of the varied practices of the members of Medal Art New Zealand and the invited guest exhibitors. The title A Place... Read more

Auckland Art Fair

BOOTH A6 24 - 27 February 2021 New Zealand’s premier showcase for contemporary art returned in 2021 from Wednesday 24 – Saturday 27 February at The Cloud on Auckland’s Queens Wharf . Read more

John Blackburn

Extended Stay 2 - 18 February 2021 ‘Extended Stay’, an exhibition of new works by John Blackburn, reflects on the artist’s forced hiatus in New Zealand at the beginning of the Global Covid-19 Pandemic. Blackburn and his wife, Maude, made their annual pilgrimage to New Zealand early in 2020 for the opening of his exhibition at ARTIS... Read more

Ann Robinson + Terry Stringer

Lightwell / Aspects 10 - 29 November 2020 “Selecting works for an exhibition is a matter of finding the common thread – form perhaps, or colour, a theme or surface decoration or maybe size. Each selection – a different choice of related works – would result in a very different exhibition. These recent works all involve creative and... Read more

Fatu Feu'u

OLA 20 October - 8 November 2020 If artists and writers are, as Fatu Feu‘u says, keepers of history and custodians of old stories yearning to be told anew, then he is uniquely qualified for this responsibility. He is the celebrated ‘Father of contemporary Pacific arts’ in Aotearoa and the bearer of two Samoan matai titles: the... Read more

Mervyn Williams

Late Harvest 15 September - 5 October 2020 Mervyn Williams has established a distinguished career as a painter and printmaker but his practice has sometimes involved sculpture, as his reliefs made in Whanganui from recycled timber demonstrate. Also, his interest in virtual and real textures in his two dimensional works encroaches upon sculptural concerns with depth as well... Read more

Liam Barr

Still Lives 25 August - 14 September 2020 'Still-life painting is a curious discipline of observation combined with technical capability. The genre harks back to the middle ages and draws our attention to everyday objects we might find within the domestic setting eg, fruit, crockery, vases, shot game etc. In fact, these ‘still lifes’ invariably have very little... Read more

JS Parker

Oh No Never Let the Spirit Die 4 - 24 August 2020 It’s easy to imagine J.S. (John) Parker in his Blenheim studio energetically laying down paint with his trusty palette knife while the music of Van Morrison (‘Spirit’ is from his 1980 album Common One ) blasts through the speakers. It is three years since Parker died (1944-2017) but his rare... Read more

Aroha Gossage

He Māra Oranga 9 June - 3 July 2020 “This series of works are paintings of my whanau , who live on our ancestral land at Pakiri. The paintings show our family gardening and growing kai on the land. The works also extend to the generations before us who occupied this place, our mothers and grandmothers and great-great grandmothers... Read more

Pamela Wolfe

Florophilia 12 May - 7 June 2020 “Right now is a critical time for Nature and the continuous cycling of life. The urgent regeneration of plants provides us with essentials for survival, purifying and pollinating our world. From ancient enduring trees to the innocent flower’s gaudy beacon to bees, all offer us inspiration, hope and consolation. There... Read more

George Baloghy

Colonial Dreaming 17 March - 5 April 2020 Baloghy has created an alternative universe based around colonial life in New Zealand. It is an ideal and beautiful universe, both mocking and nostalgic. Like all faded memories it narrates a wistfulness for a life that never really existed, overlaid with surrealist ideas and continuous bright sunny days. The central... Read more

John Blackburn + Marian Fountain

Parallel Reflections 11 - 23 February 2020 Returning from London for his 11 th exhibition at ARTIS Gallery, it is both apposite and convenient to suggest that John Blackburn’s career has spanned parallel paths both in New Zealand & Britain over the last six decades. Blackburn’s work reveals a remarkably consistent vision and approach. The paintings in... Read more

Ray Ching

The Voyage 26 November - 15 December 2019 The Voyage recounts the story of how members of Ching’s imaginary menagerie set out on a quest to find their own Eldorado, an Elysian land across the sea. The images deal with two aspects; the journey and the hazards it entailed, and the arrival. The voyage itself was by no... Read more

Nigel Brown

Dog 15 October - 3 November 2019 Nigel Brown continues to challenge the viewer on social and environmental issues in this current exhibition. 'The dog was inspired by our black dog - this is how he looks clipped, but with time he turns into a chaotic fur ball.' 'DOG is an exhibition of new paintings and cut... Read more

Elizabeth Rees

Sealight 3 - 23 September 2019 The most mundane aspects of our lives are often majestic, if we only knew it. In New Zealand we live in such overwhelming beauty that we so often take for granted and seldom stop to take it in. Walking on a beach, participating in the most prosaic day-to-day stuff, is... Read more

Bronwynne Cornish + Hamish Foote

Psalm 13 August - 2 September 2019 Cornish and Foote are playing off the same song sheet, on very different instruments. Hamish Foote has become fascinated by a gene process, known as leucism, where a recessive gene in both parents can throw up a completely white offspring - this is not to be confused with albinism. As... Read more

Fatu Feu'u

Reconciliation 23 July - 11 August 2019 Reconciliation – a new body of work by renowned Samoan artist Fatu Feu’u ONZM, opened on Tuesday 23 July at ARTIS Gallery. Fatu Feu’u ONZM explores motifs of Pacific and particularly his Samoan culture with a strong modernist interpretation and he has established a distinctive style, which sees him recognised... Read more

Nicky Foreman

Incrementum 25 June - 7 July 2019 'From a personal point of view, I have always found it easier to center myself in an ornate space and although there is a current push towards the pared back, I am attracted to the unbridled flamboyance of Baroque. The storytelling and emotion evoking imagery resonates with me and I... Read more

Ron Left

Shadow Series 11 - 24 June 2019 The Shadow Series, and closely related Escalator Series, are part of an on-going commitment to the reinvention of abstraction. Although the works are connected to and informed by modernist painting and minimalism, they explore a basic premise of an inherent connection between things, and a denial of a self-contained, hermetic... Read more

Auckland Art Fair 2019

BOOTH A1 1 - 5 May 2019 At New Zealand’s premier international showcase for contemporary art, the Auckland Art Fair, ARTIS Gallery will be displaying works from Nigel Brown, Ray Ching, Fatu Feu’u, Marian Fountain, Aroha Gossage, Peter Panyoczki, Ann Robinson and Mervyn Wiliams. Find us as The Cloud on Auckland’s Queen’s Wharf, at Booth A1. Read more

MANZ - Medal Art New Zealand

About Face 19 March - 14 April 2019 ARTIS Gallery is the host gallery for Medal Art New Zealand (MANZ) – a group of New Zealand’s leading contemporary sculptors. This 2019 biennial exhibition has thirty-four artists presenting medals and /or small sculptures. “The making of medals in the past evolved from the early traditions of metal coinage. Today... Read more

John Blackburn & Margaret Lovell

All Fired Up 12 - 25 February 2019 Although still going strong at 86, it is both apposite and convenient to propose that John Blackburn’s extraordinary career as a painter is now bookended by fire works. For surely, at his age, Blackburn cannot be expected to surpass his latest body of work, the Fire Painting s; thirty paintings... Read more

Bruce Hunt

Tussock 12 - 25 February 2019 Otago-based artist Bruce Hunt has two very distinct strings to his bow: fine photojournalistic studies of the people who live in the unforgiving landscape of northeastern Brazil, and exceptional portraits of the landforms of the deserted hill country of North Otago. While these two subjects may seem almost completely unrelated... Read more

Pamela Wolfe

Fantasia 6 - 25 November 2018 Pamela Wolfe is regarded as one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent painters and is renowned for her beautiful vibrant canvases of large flowers. In previous years, Wolfe’s floral portraits made clear connection with 17th Century Dutch still-life paintings, and were distinguished by their dark backgrounds. The flowers in these works from... Read more

Terry Stringer

Some New Sculpture 16 October - 4 November 2018 Terry Stringer is a leading New Zealand sculptor and a key figure in the history of New Zealand art. Working predominantly in bronze, the majority of Stringer’s sculptures depict figures and still-life subjects. His signature works have become synonymous with high profile public sites throughout New Zealand. Stringer’s works explore... Read more

Liam Barr

Tethered 4 - 24 September 2018 “I have always been drawn to the horse, perhaps it is because I was born in the year of the horse or perhaps it is their sheer magnificence. This beast known for its athleticism, strength and intelligence is emblematic of all that is majestic, free and pure. In this series... Read more

Aroha Gossage

Wairua 14 August - 2 September 2018 Aroha Gossage’s paintings seek to connect with tupuna and the past. Her landscapes are located in Pakiri and Hauturu (Little Barrier), physically, spiritually and conceptually. Much of the conceptual foundation of her art Gossage attributes to her mother, and to a childhood spent learning how to live with and from... Read more

Fatu Feu'u

Ole Malaga 24 July - 12 August 2018 Fatu Feu’u is a noted New Zealand-based Samoan artist, acknowledged as both a leader and mentor within the Pacific arts community. He is best known as a multi-media artist and while primarily a painter, he explores a range of other mediums including bronze, wood and stone sculpture, pottery design, lithographs,... Read more

Auckland Art Fair

23 - 27 May 2018 New Zealand’s premier international showcase for contemporary art, Auckland Art Fair, returns to The Cloud on Auckland’s Queen’s Wharf. At Booth A1 ARTIS Gallery will be displaying works from a selection of our represented artists. Read more

Ray Ching

Aesop's Outback Fables 1 - 20 May 2018 Aesop’s Outback Fables is the third edition in the anthology of works by renowned artist Ray Ching. He has painted over 200 works for this volume and has hand written the accompanying text, which chronicles Aesop’s imaginary expedition into the Australian Outback. “This book of fables is the place I... Read more