Vashti Johnstone is a woman who won’t be pigeonholed. With a strong sense of self, she is a diva who sets herself apart, uniquely positioned in the world of art, once even experiencing rejection because she didn’t subscribe to an easily identifiable genre. One might describe Johnstone as a New Zealand contemporary landscape-inspired abstract expressionist.…
Kulimoe’anga Stone Maka stands as one of the most compelling contemporary artists working from Aotearoa New Zealand today, distinguished by a practice that fuses ancestral Tongan knowledge with experimental, often monumental, painterly processes. His work is rooted in the sacred art of ngatu tāʻuli, Tongan blackened tapa cloth, yet it consistently pushes beyond ethnographic expectation,…
Without totally orientalizing painter Tony Guo’s surreal vaudevilles, it’s difficult not to see the (violently) anxious eroticism of manga comic artist Junji Ito in his work. Like Ito, Guo’s figures suffer from an ecstatic dysmorphia (for example, Gardeners, 2020, a fractured self-portrait in which the artist literally dismembers himself). But unlike Ito the source of…
Maania Tealei’s exhibition Whakahōnore i tō tātou taonga tuku iho: Honouring Our Legacy exhibited at the Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru, 14th June–10th August 2025. Māui and Muriranga-whenua. Whaitiri and Tāwhaki. These pūrākau—ancestral stories—are reminders of the enduring influence of Māori kaumātua (elders), who appear within them as guides, guardians, and teachers. These stories live…
At just 9 years old, Eastern-Southland-based artist Paul McLachlan’s eyes were opened to the potential of art by the modernist masterpieces on display at the Guggenheim exhibition that toured to Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1996. This profound experience ignited a lifelong passion for art, leading him to pursue a career as an artist. ‘This…
Cartoonist Sharon Murdoch finds solace from covering the daily parade of political swine by literally shrinking her subjects down to size. She explains this system when I ask how she keeps herself psychologically intact when facing a daily diet of malice, lies, bigotry and bombast from the current coalition Government. It’s been a rambling, revealing…
by Andrew Paul Wood Palmerston North-based Jordan Quinnell was born and raised in Ōpunake on the Taranaki coast, and his whakapapa is to Ngā Ruahine, Taranaki and Tūwharetoa iwi. He has a bachelor’s degree, post-graduate diploma (with Merit), and Masters of Māori Visual Art (with Distinction) through the Toioho ki Āpiti Māori Arts programme at…
At the State Hermitage Museum, people are constantly taking selfies in front of Black Square (1915). Whether or not we consider it to be a ‘correct’ way to engage with an artwork, selfie-taking is increasingly common in art museums world-wide; it’s a contemporary cultural phenomenon, with audiences typically singling out a particular ‘iconic’ work to…
By Andrew Paul Wood Michael Armstrong was born in Christchurch in 1954 and has regularly exhibited since 1969. He graduated from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1976. He lives in Timaru in South Canterbury and had a lengthy career as an art tutor at Aoraki Polytechnic, later Ara Institute. He was…
![Industrial Camouflage [The Chaos of Hope]](https://www.takahe.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/T108-cover-ruff-545x720.jpg)
By Claire Chamberlain Sefton Rani describes himself as a maker who uses paint as his material of choice to create contemporary Pacific art. Rani produces work that exists outside hackneyed tropes of palm tree-fringed sunsets or other touristic motifs, yet still holds strong connection with the art, history and spirituality of the southernmost of the…