27 July – 2 November 2024 | This exhibition launches a new biennial programme of contemporary art commissions, supported by a partnership between Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery and the Gwen Malden Charitable Trust.
6 July – 5 October 2024 | The Ceremony in the Air is a network of paintings by Pip Davies, strung together in a cloak-like embrace. The work comprises twenty-three acrylic paintings on fabric, with patterns determined upon a geometric formwork of ‘Einstein tiles’. The recently discovered Einstein tile is a thirteen-sided polygon that tessellates infinitely, without ever repeating the same exact pattern.
3 May - 24 August 2024 | Live performance: Wednesday 1 May, 10am - 4.30pm | Kelekele Mo‘ui (Living Soil) centres on a live performance by artist Kalisolaite ‘Uhila. Developed following a residency in Heretaunga Hastings in mid-2023, the work responds to the ways in which people live off and labour on the land.
16 March – 23 June 2024 | Can you see us now? is a new sculptural installation by Jasmine Togo-Brisby, a South Sea Islander artist of Ni-Vanuatu ancestry. It asks questions of visibility and cultural memory, exploring the global legacies of the South Pacific slave trade and its passages through Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean. The work explores empathy and resistance across time, space, and genealogies – a vessel for the connected journeys of many.
16 March – 23 June 2024 | Foundations & Additions presents a sample of the original architectural features and evolution of the Heretaunga streetscape, bringing together hand-drawn plans for a cluster of Art Deco buildings in central Hastings. Curated by Charlie Ropitini and Sophie Davis in collaboration with Hastings District Council’s Content Management team.
9 December 2023 - 14 April 2024 | He Whare Ātaahua is an installation by Jade Townsend which combines different traditions of painting, adornment, and decoration. The exhibition title, meaning “a beautiful house”, speaks to Townsend’s interest in layering cultural ideas of aesthetic beauty and finding meaning within our environment.
9 December 2023 – 10 March 2024 | Exploring the shifting political grounds of global food production, Empty Vessels and Desert Narratives is a dialogue between Aotearoa New Zealand artist Matthew Galloway and Sahrawi Western Saharan artist Mohamed Sleiman Labat. The two, who have had an ongoing correspondence since meeting in 2016, present different perspectives on Aotearoa’s reliance on phosphate rock from Western Sahara.
25 November – 25 February 2024 | Vital Machinery explores intersections in the practices of five Aotearoa women artists - Conor Clarke, Selina Ershadi, Janet Lilo, Louise Menzies and Meg Porteous - working across photography and moving image. In this exhibition, the camera has been engaged as a technology and an extension of the body and thought process.
9 September – 26 November 2023 | Focusing on the kōtuku and their only nesting grounds in Aotearoa New Zealand, Comfort Zone explores the limits of human understanding, and the distances we put between ourselves and other species. Songsataya has woven together footage of nesting kōtuku with images and animations exploring proximities between the human, non-human, and celestial.
9 September – 26 November 2023 | Mai i te kei o ngā waka ki te ihu o ngā waka presents three haerenga (meaning journey, trip, parting) exploring contrasting yet interlinked stories of migration. The title of this work translates in English to “from the front of the canoes to the back of the canoes”, suggesting multiple viewpoints that comprise a collective journey.
5 August – 5 November 2023 | In 'Amui ‘i Mu'a - Ancient Futures Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck and Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi explore pathways between the past, present, and future in Tongan arts. This exhibition surveys the individual work of Dyck and Tohi from the 1990s-2020s and sits within an ongoing research project exploring the legacies of late-18th and early-19th Century customary Tongan art practices.
27 May - 20 August 2023 | Design Kahungunu explores designs based on traditional kōwhaiwhai and heke patterns which are intentionally linked to whakapapa. Led by Dr Sandy Adsett, Design Kahungunu is an opportunity for Iwi Toi Kahungunu artists to come together to explore traditional styles and, in doing so, develop and create new designs.
28 April – 16 July 2023 | Evan Woodruffe creates lively painterly environments. His visual language has been likened to ‘mapping’ – creating luscious surfaces and abstract landscapes with multiple points of departure for viewers. No straight lines pursues dialogues between painting and our everyday surroundings, embracing immersive scale and texture.
27 Feb – 7 May 2023 | In 2009, Taupō-based photographer Jeremy Bright was travelling through to the Wairarapa when he drove past the old Waipukurau Hospital – a group of disused buildings on Pōrangahau Road. He stopped to look closer, sparking a decade’s worth of regular visits documenting the site.
27 Feb - 7 May 2023 | To be at home is a new site-specific installation by artist Salome Tanuvasa, comprising a series of banners made from new and recycled fabric. The artist has stitched and appliquéd shapes into playful, abstract compositions which suggest direction and movement — responding to flows of people and conversation.
17 December – 16 April 2023 | Hemi Macgregor (Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tūhoe) presents a body of work which acknowledges stories of environment and the ways our lives are set within it. The exhibition acknowledges atua, whenua, and our personal journey within these interconnected foundations for daily life.
5 November 2022 – 6 February 2023 | Icebound is a photographic exhibition by Jonathan Kay. It contemplates the fragility of our landscapes through surveying of two Te Waipounamu glaciers - Haupapa/Tasman and Te Moeka o Tūawe/Fox. Kay explored these glaciers as a way of making sense of the environments impacted by climate change in Aotearoa.
12 November - 6 February, 2023 | Virginia Leonard works with clay, resin, and oozing glazes to create ceramic sculptures. Leonard’s layering adds a voluptuous tension to her work which is organic and revulsive but is also vital, evolving, and honest.
3 September – 30 October 2022 | Peter Ireland’s oil paintings on paper showing in the Alcove Gallery intersect with, but are not shaped by, the usual “New Zealand” symbols. These paintings reflect Peter Ireland as a religious painter - his use of symbolism draws on Christian concepts of signification as well as Renaissance painting traditions and exemplars.
15 August - 26 August | We are excited to announce that the NZQA Top Art exhibition is coming to Hastings City Art Gallery from Monday 15 to Friday 26 August. Top Art is an annual touring exhibition of the best and highest achieving 2021 NCEA portfolios from around the country. Five streams are covered, including design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.
10 September – 4 December 2022 | Main Gallery | "Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things." - Arthur Schopenhauer. Everyone, from all walks of life and across cultures, experiences loss and grief during their lives, whether it’s private and personal loss, within their community, or at a global level.
11 June – 21 August 2022 | Main Gallery | For over 30 years, Wellington-based sculptor/installation artist Elizabeth Thomson has been drawn to areas of scientific knowledge such as botany, micro-biology, oceanography and mathematics.
18 June - 28 August 2022 | Alcove Gallery | Te Pō Uriuri is an immersive experience retelling the pūrakau/legend of Uru, the eldest child of Ranginui and Papatūānuku. This installation embodies the safe haven, Te Kahutuanui-a-Rangi, the cloak of Uru’s father, where he fled, seeking refuge as he withdrew from his whānau. Uru sits here as a contemporary koruru in an era of deep darkness – Te Pō Uriuri.
30 April – 24 October 2022 | Holt Gallery | With their pioneering use of virtual reality, artists Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, have created a mysterious universe of alien architecture populated by humanoid clones and cryptic symbols, traversed via a network of travellators and gateways. Terminus is open to the public Mon-Thurs from 11am till 4.30pm, and normal hours Fri-Sun, so our local schools can come experience it first thing, without interrupting your viewing pleasure.
26 March – 15 May 2022 | Main Gallery | Star Waka acknowledges past, present and future voyaging to and from Aotearoa in all directions, with the stars reflecting navigation patterns over time and space. Together, the waka and the stars symbolise the universe and the binding together of ira atua (the realm of the gods) and iratangata (the realm of humans).
March 26 – May 22 2022 | Main Gallery | A journey in understanding Maramataka and traditional celestial navigation practices through the revitalisation of aute, Kōkōrangi ki kōkōwai is a major solo exhibition by artist Nikau Hindin (Ngai Tūpoto, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi).
February 5 – April 3 2022 | Foyer Gallery | Taradale artist Glen Colechin has created an installation piece for the Foyer Gallery entitled Last Supper. Using copper and other recycled materials he’s formed a large boil up and feeding frenzy of fish the like that is often seen while walking along the sand at local beaches.
March 12 – June 5, 2022 | Alcove Gallery | Inga Fillary’s installation, What’s the Matter, plays with psychic discomfort and damaged and shattered imagery – it invites the viewer to experience instability, exploring the materials of a flawed humanity. Each component of the installation offers its own journey, history and vital force - deeper realities lie concealed beneath their perceived surfaces.
30 October – 30 January 2022 | Foyer Gallery | Kaye McGarva plays with shadows creating trompe-l’oeil paintings of creases and folds with the intention of challenging the spectator’s perception. Her work is about the act of looking, creating uncertainty and provoking a physical sensation associated with seeing something familiar but strange. She wishes to encourage the viewer coming into the Foyer Gallery to slow down, take notice, and hopefully look at the world around them with new eyes.
December 18 2021 – March 13 2022 | Main Gallery | This exhibition features visual artists, a writer and a documentary producer for whom surfing has been part of their life journey. Although connected by surfing, they haven’t been asked to create or exhibit ‘Surf Art’, but rather to interrogate the crossover in their passions, and contemplate through their practice and discussion the connection between these two creative and formative activities.
December 4 2021 – March 27 2022 | Holt Gallery | In late 1846 surveyor Thomas Brunner employed Māori guides Kehu and Pikiwati to travel with him from Nelson to Te Tai Poutini (the West Coast) and back again, searching for land suitable to expand settlements within the fledgling Nelson province. In Prospects Fearful Wellington-based artists Caroline McQuarrie and Shaun Matthews examine Brunner’s journey via the mediums of embroidery, photography and weaving.
22 May – 1 August 2021 | Foyer Gallery | The idea of a book as an art object evolved in the mid-20th Century when artists began experimenting with the book format as a means to express their ideas. This touring exhibition from the Print Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (PCANZ) sees printmakers from throughout Aotearoa, including eight artists from Hawke’s Bay, expand on and explore the idea of the artist book by taking the concept of a book further, creating art objects inspired by the form and/or function of a book. This idea has been approached using a range of techniques and materials which extend beyond the realm of traditional printmaking.
15 May – 21 July 2021 | Alcove Gallery | Dali Susanto was born in the art capital of Indonesia, Yogyakarta and was brought up surrounded by artists. His mother and father owned and still run a batik gallery and studio where they teach local and international tourists the skills in batik work. Named after Salvador Dali, his parents hoped he would follow in the renowned artist’s footsteps and become an artist.
7 August – 25 October 2021 | Foyer Gallery | The contemporary concept of young art is work not defined by the age of the creator, but by the stage the artist is at in their career. This exhibition brings together the work of two Hawke’s Bay artists working in two different disciplines who have both reached a significant stage in their career development. Sharleen Gamble and Ashton Lexie Jamieson are both recent graduates of IDEAschool at EIT and they are both wanting, through their work, to create an awareness of the quality and diversity of contemporary female artists at work in Hawke’s Bay.
31 July – 14 November 2021 | Alcove Gallery | Larisse Hall explores the value of time within an everyday context. Deconstructing our notions of the traditional 2-D painting to create an immersive participatory version of the self-portrait. In this new 'painting', Larisse invites the viewer to become both the co-creator and the subject matter. Encouraging the viewer to participate and engage with the work to activate the painting process.
14 August – 28 November 2021 | Holt Gallery | Over the last six months Ayesha Green has been developing a body of work specifically for the Holt Gallery. This exhibition looks at the visual language and history of Native Schooling in New Zealand with a focus on Hukarere Girls’ College, founded in 1875 and located in Hawke’s Bay.
25 September – 5 December 2021 | Main Gallery | Carole Shepheard is a well-known figure in the arts landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2002 appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to the arts.
13 March – 23 May 2021 | Main Gallery | Flirting with form: Works by TOI AKO artists is an exhibition that explores the role of the arts and wellbeing in communities, and its effectiveness in supporting older people to age well. Showcasing works by 13 emerging elder artists aged 56-91, developed over 2019-2020 as part of Connect the Dots pilot mentoring project, TOI AKO which is a creative collaboration between older people living in care and practising artists. This exhibition speaks to the reciprocal nature of learning, where artist mentors have shared their skills, encouraging older participants to bring their unique life experiences to shape their own visual language.
27 February - 9 May 2021 | Foyer and Alcove Galleries | Still Life with Moving Parts is an exhibition created by outsider artists from A Supported Life. A Supported Life works with the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Health to empower people with intellectual disabilities through supported accommodation, lifestyle planning and development. Their creative space - Two4nine is motivated by a belief in the authentic creativity in the works of their artists. We believe art is about revealing ourselves and creating meaningful connections – between artists, tutors and art lovers.
We are excited to announce that the NZQA Top Art exhibition is coming to Hastings City Art Gallery from Monday 3 to Friday 7 May. Top Art is an annual touring exhibition of the best and highest achieving 2020 NCEA portfolios from around the country. Five streams are covered, including design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.
5 February - 2 May 2021 | Holt Gallery | Born in, and working out of an apartment studio in New Plymouth, Jordan Barnes is recognised as an artistic all-rounder. He’s an award winning painter and is considered to be one of New Zealand’s top emerging artists.
21 November - 28 February 2021 | Main Gallery, Foyer and Alcove Galleries | Hastings City Art Gallery presents EAST 2020, a biennial exhibition celebrating and surveying the current creative practice connected to the Heretaunga Hawke’s Bay region. The works of 54 Hawke’s Bay artists have been selected for the exhibition, which includes painting, ceramics, large-scale photography, video and sculptural installations.
24 October 2020 - 24 January | Holt Gallery | Arbuckle’s practice is a process-driven exploration of place, bridging the notions of landscape with the languages of abstraction. He manipulates the fundamentals of scale, format, composition, material, colour and mark-making to produce sculptural paintings that are large, vigorous and bold in the forms they take.
15 August – 1 November 2020 | Alcove Gallery | In this installation piece, Kireka has explored the feminine elements of the natural world, creating a narrative using light and mixed media to explore the connections between cosmic influences and the future of humanity.
15 August – 1 November 2020 | Foyer Gallery | Japanese-born artist Diegel lives and works in Auckland, her work often dealing with the realisation of existence: Things that are consumed, worn, worked, carried, forgotten or collected.
8 August - 1 November 2020 | Main Gallery | Curated by Sandy Adsett | TIKA TONU brings emerging and established contemporary painters and sculptors from the iwi of Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa, ki Heretaunga, ki Wairarapa together in an exhibition of artwork derived from, but beyond the tradition.
4 July – 11 October 2020 | Holt Gallery | As a photographer, Derek Henderson has a broad ranging practice, working across the genres of fashion, architecture, portrait and landscape. Henderson has spent many years working abroad and he now bases himself between Auckland and Sydney. Even when living overseas, he always maintained his connection with New Zealand and the New Zealand landscape has been a regular feature of his work.
23 May – 9 August 2020 | Foyer Gallery | Responding to coastal environments in Aotearoa, this exhibition explores the play of water and light, breaching threshold to alter states. These prismatic images suggest a universal dynamic - geometries of nature organic in origin.
23 May – 9 August 2020 | Alchove Gallery |This new installation is a sensory exploration and discovery to re-connect with the natural world in a society that changes with high speed through faster technology and global economy.
We are excited to announce that the NZQA Top Art exhibition is coming to Hastings City Art Gallery from Monday 3 to Friday 7 August. Top Art is an annual touring exhibition of the best and highest achieving 2019 NCEA portfolios from around the country. Five streams are covered, including design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.
13 June – 19 July 2020 | Alchove Gallery | In March 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, Aotearoa New Zealand was asked to stay at home and restrict all unnecessary contact with other people to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This state of precaution was officially referred to as ‘lockdown’.
Until 21 June 2020 | Holt Gallery | Art as social commentary is a feature of Anna Crichton’s work and Ragpicker at 4am is an invitation to reflect on Crichton’s response to social issues in rural India. Featuring handstitched embroideries, glass beading and wood block printed fabrics, this exhibition is sure to stimulate reflection and discussion.
29 February – 17 May 2020 | Alcove and Foyer | The Crescent Moon: the Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand, gives a face and a voice to New Zealand’s Muslims of Asian descent, who form the majority of Muslims both in this country and in the world as a whole.
Until 24 May 2020 | Main Gallery | The Hastings City Art Gallery is proud to present KAMOAN MINE, a comprehensive survey exhibition of Samoan / New Zealand artist Andy Leleisi’uao, curated by Ben Bergman. Leleisi’uao is one of the most significant Pasifika artists living and working in New Zealand today.
8 May - 8 August 2021 | Holt Gallery | Campbell has for more than 40 years worked on building a darkly funny imaginary world using satire, fantasy and humour to contemplate some serious, possibly even profound, questions. For 'Head Above the Water', Campbell has delivered some of the most substantial works of his career, taking viewers on a journey with a recurring cast of characters – along with some new ones – who he commissions to help relay his commentary on contemporary life.
7 December 2019 - 23 February 2020 | Alcove and Foyer Galleries | Leanne Morrison’s practice positions her firmly within the modernist tradition, but extends past this into a consideration of the painting as a material object in and of itself. Her style is representational - but she is representing what art critic Clement Greenberg described as “the limitations that constitute the medium of painting - the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment”
12 June – 15 Aug 2021 | Foyer Gallery |The te MOKO exhibition showcases “the face of Māori Art today”. A specifically designed installation of contemporary artwork by artists of Heretaunga engaging in reprising cultural values beyond the Marae. Of treasuring the images that identify us; Of claiming a space to stand as ourselves; Of being Māori-centric in identifying what makes for creative artistic excellence. Curated by Sandy Adsett
16 November – 1 March 2020 | Holt Gallery | Harvest is a photographic exhibition by local Hawke’s Bay photographer Richard Brimer. Through large scale format photographs Richard captures portraits of the seasonal worker, those behind Hawke’s bay booming horticulture and viticultural industries. Brimer’s access to all areas of this industry allows him to capture a series of intimate photographs shot in location that investigate and document the life of the seasonal worker a diverse community adding to a rich horticulture sector in the Hawke’s Bay region.
17 August - 1 December 2019 | Foyer and Alcove Galleries | Artists talk about processes a lot, processes and practices. If you boil them down, all that means is “this is how I need to make things, and this is how I manage to do it every day”. In Bernard Winkel’s work, you sense that everyday-ness doesn’t just define his daily habit of adding to an ever-growing collection of studio productions.
3 August - 3 November 2019 | Foyer Gallery | John Scott Works is a personal visual response to the work of acclaimed New Zealand architect John Scott. Photographer David Straight explores the essence of Scott’s work – from intimate images of architectural details and moments, to ideas rooted in te ao Māori which are found in Scott's work.
3 August - 3 November 2019 | Main Gallery | Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua or more commonly said, ‘ka mua ka muri’, is an idea of time where past and present are intertwined.In fibre, past and present co-exist. Textile art spans new and old worlds and is, perhaps more than any other art form, defined by both its links to its archaic history and its powerful radical potential in the present.
19 July – 27 October 2019 | Holt Gallery | In Lamentation, Bob Jahnke commissions new work by six poets including Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makareti. Drawing on their texts, Jahnke laments the destruction of our natural world.
18 May – 11 August 2019 | Foyer Gallery | Estelle Martin, Keil Cas, Elena Renker, Nichola Shanley, Katherine Smyth, Laurie Steer, Isobel Thom, Daegan Wells, and archival digital prints by Kim Meek. This exhibition demonstrates the exciting diversity in current ceramic production in Aotearoa, and the enduring appeal of the clay vase. This exhibition has been supported by the Ceramics Association of New Zealand, and is presented in conjunction with the launch of Issue 3 of Ceramics New Zealand Magazine.
18 May – 11 August 2019 | Alcove Gallery | In this exhibition Yukari Kaihori communicates a deep concern for the environment and its critical relationship with value systems, politics and society. Kaihori says her interest in different value systems comes from her upbringing in both the East and the West, the cultural values of which had inherent differences and similarities.
30 March - 7 July 2019 | Holt Gallery | Kauri Hawkins (Ngāti Pāhauwera, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata) hails from Gisborne where he grew up on the sheep station at Young Nick’s Head. Referencing the arrival of James Cook’s Endeavour at Poverty Bay in 1769, Hawkins’ sculptural project explores the duality of our heritage and identity 250 years on.
6 April - 21 July 2019 | Main Gallery | New Zealand artist Jan Nigro (b. 1920, d. 2012) was born in Gisborne and attended Manutūkē School before moving to Napier 1930. This significant retrospective exhibition has been distilled from her life’s work held by the Jan Nigro Trust. The works illustrate a strong female contribution to the trajectory of contemporary New Zealand art history and reclaims Jan Nigro as an important New Zealand artist.
24 March - 22 July 2018 | Main Gallery, Foyer & Alcove | Bring the kids to this fun, interactive exhibition titled Play art that makes you move. Walk through the enormous inflated capsules of Seung Yul Oh’s 'Periphery'. Make music with Campbell Tamahina Burns’ 'Internal Geometries'. Imagine and build your own cityscape using hundreds of wooden blocks designed by Sara Hughes for 'Heretaunga'.
16 February 2019 - 12 May 2019 | Foyer | A new collaborative installation is using photography, found objects and audio as a unique means to connect viewers with a small group of Hawke’s Bay people who have become the subjects of unconventional portraits by Billie Culy and Henry Lyons. Titled ‘At the Table’, Culy and Lyons’ work does not feature images of the participants, rather it focuses on personal objects, accompanied by recorded conversation to tell their stories.
11 August - 11 November 2018 | Alcove, Holt and Foyer | Hastings City Art Gallery presents EAST 2018, a biennial exhibition celebrating the diversity of creative practice connected to the Heretaunga Hawke’s Bay region. Vanessa Arthur // Annette Bull // John Brown // Joyce Campbell // Terri Ripeka Crawford // Jenny Gillam // Ayesha Green // Kauri Hawkins // Michael Hawksworth // Rangituhia Hollis // Peter Madden // George Nuku // Ben Pearce // Martin Poppelwell // Clare Plug // Sonya Lacey // Lara Lindsay-Parker // Jacob Scott // Ann Shelton // Natalie Robertson // Tim Thatcher // David Trubridge // Kamaka Pottery (Bruce And Estelle Martin)
8 December 2018 - 17 March 2019 | Holt Gallery | Self taught Waipawa artist, Gary Waldrom looks back on a lifetime of painting. His subjects exude character, whimsy and life - confronting the viewer with their raw humanity. Bathed in the golden glow of his warm palette, they are fully actualised beings located in a shadowy unreality of time and space. These works are arresting in their scale, their capacity for joy, and the tenderness with which the artist creates a world that his subjects, whatever their foibles, can call home.
24 November 2018 - 24 March 2019 | Main Gallery | The Water Project engages with the complex realities of water in the 21st Century - as bringer of life and ancestral voice, but also as a contested commodity and saleable resource. Thirteen artists explore the cultural, conceptual and imaginative qualities of rivers, lakes, wetlands and freshwater systems of Aotearoa/New Zealand and their crucial role in the well-being of our communities.
17 November 2018 - 10 February 2019 | Foyer & Alcove | Guest curator, Chloe Geoghegan brings together new work by five emerging and mid-career artists from around Aotearoa who push material boundaries, using a mixed media approach to resist competitive image ecologies and turn contemporary notions of the abject upside down.
30 June - 5 August 2018 | Holt Gallery | Auckland sculptor Natalie Guy reworks and reconfigures the domestic interior and familiar everyday objects with a shift in scale. These new objects become neither prop nor decor, possibly belonging in a modernist collector's apartment or a museum collection.
19 May - 24 June 2018 | Holt Gallery | In this world where uncertainty and radical change leave many of us profoundly vulnerable or overwhelmed local sculptor Kay Bazzard challenges us to acknowledge and engage with this reality, presenting a series of figurative images sculpted in clay.
7 April - 13 May 2018 | Holt Gallery | In 'Anthroposcenarios', Hawkes Bay- based artist, Susan Mabin, draws together detritus and natural objects from local beaches to create a body of work that includes sculpture, photography and installation.
27 January – 11 March 2018 | Alcove | Raewyn Paterson is an artist and designer of Ngāti-rere, Ngāi Tūhoe descent. Paterson's work creating interior spaces that utilise Māori design elements for wallpapers and furnishings will delight visitors in this installation.
27 January – 11 March 2018 | Vanessa Arthur: To be Everywhere at Once Yet Nowhere at All | Vanessa Arthur is a jeweller based in Hawke's Bay who has exhibited throughout New Zealand and internationally. Moving seamlessly between sculpture and jewellery, Arthur makes objects inspired by spaces within the built urban environment - the spaces that occur between 'planning'.
9 December 2017 - 18 March 2018 | Main Gallery | Paratene Matchitt is one of New Zealand’s most prominent senior artists. Matchitt’s 60-year career has seen his work in most public art gallery collections in this country. The gallery is thrilled to present new work in ‘Hui’ Matchitt’s first major exhibition in three years.
9 November 2017 - January 2018 | Alcove the Foyer | Hawke's Bay based landscape artist John Eaden paints 'Towards the Grand Tour', new work from 2016/17. Earlier this year, Eaden toured Italy and was able to research locations in the Vatican Gardens and in Padova in the north. Echoes of these works are also applied by Eaden to his landscapes of Hawke's Bay.
9 December 2017 - 25 March 2018 | Holt Gallery | Sculptor Ben Pearce installs a large-scale work in the gallery. Based on the true story of a man who built himself a get-away on the boulder bank of Nelson’s inlet, Pearce’s sculpture is a fascinating revisit of the event in which Ben himself played a surprising role.
26 August 2017 - 3 December 2017 | Holt, Main, Alcove and Foyer | Everyday Lines presents the work of 16 artists who interrogate objects and activities of daily life. The result is artwork that encourages us to look closer and consider what the relationship is between the artist and the everyday.
28 May 2017 - 13 August 2017 | Main Gallery | This exhibition sits alongside See What I Can See, and is a selection of works from moving image and photographic artists with connections to Hawke’s Bay. These include Nova Paul, Richard Brimer, Joyce Campbell, Mark Smith, Deborah Smith, Rakai Karaitiana, Juliet Carpenter and Helena Hughes.
6 May 2017 - 11 June 2017 | Foyer Gallery | Ariā can be defined as the physical representation of an atua (ancestor with continuing influence). These influential characters could manifest as all types of supernatural beings, deities or guardians. This work represents the intrinsic connections between whenua (land/site) and atua.
17 June 2017 - 3 September | Hot, Foyer and Alcove | In March 2017, Edith Amituanai spent five weeks as Hastings City Art Gallery’s first artist-in-residence, working with students at Kimi Ora Community School, Flaxmere. The result is #keeponkimiora, presenting a series of powerful images of the students in their everyday life and play.
28 May 2017 - 13 August 2017 | Main Gallery | Co-curated by Gregory O'Brien and Sarjeant Gallery curator Greg Donson See What I Can See is a celebration of that remarkable, well-travelled, ever-changing invention – the camera – the New Zealand that it captured, and the artists who wielded it. Toured by Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui
6 May 2017 - 18 June 2017 | Alcove | Artist Makareta Tātare creates works based on kōwhaiwhai, using repetition of Māori patterns and symbols. Tātare portrays the origins of kōwhaiwhai by describing its arrival from Hawaiiki, the land Māori are said to have migrated from hundreds of years ago. Tātare says that “By going back to traditional art forms and bringing them into the contemporary world, we can truly see the evolution of identity”.
25 March 2017 – 30 April 2017 | Foyer and Alcove | In this exhibition Hawke’s Bay artist Asaki Kajima draws on her preoccupations with connection and communication. Combining wire, clay and fibres including twine and rope, Asaki’s ethereal sculptures connect the natural and manmade.
10 March 2017 – 28 May 2017 | Holt Gallery | Curated by Roy Dunningham and Bronwyn Thorp, this exhibition delves into some of the private collections in Hawke's Bay, to bring us diverse, dynamic works from New Zealand artists.
18 February 2017 – 14 May 2017 | Main Gallery | Iwi Toi Kahungunu is a recently formed collective of established artists from the visual, performance and language disciplines, whom either whakapapa to Kahungunu or reside in the iwi.
1 February 2017 – 19 March 2017 | Foyer and Alcove | Pattullo creates a physical connection to her forebears, as thread, stitching and fabric form both metaphoric and literal links to the past. Woven into these works are stories of whaling off Mahia Peninsula in the 1800s...
17 December 2016 – 6 February 2017 | Alcove Gallery | Meryl Winter uses assemblage to draw attention to conflicting Utopian ideals and their effect on society. With this interest in diversity as a global unifying concept, Library of Curiosities sees each object or ‘book’ in the library as a representation of an aspect of the human condition.
26 November 2016 – 26 February 2017 | Holt Gallery | In this fascinating animated work we see both everyday and transcendent potential.
12 November 2016 – 5 February 2017 | Main Gallery | The EAST biennial is a selected exhibition at Hastings City Art Gallery, surveying current arts practice in the Bay. EAST includes emergent and established artists and attracts entries from throughout New Zealand, who have connections to Hawke’s Bay.
22 October 2016 - 4 December 2016 | Foyer Gallery | Matt Palmer’s images avoid idealized notions of scenic beauty and pristine wilderness. South of Here is a deliberate conversation about the altered landscape. Looking at the objects that are scattered across it like a still life painter surveys the table top. Trying to find beauty in places that feel more abandoned than lived in.
3 September 2016 – 16 October 2016 | Foyer Gallery | Ann Verdcourt was born in Bedfordshire, England, and immigrated to New Zealand with her husband in 1965. Her work references many other artists and art movements, drawing from her extensive knowledge of art history. In her work one can find allusions to artists including Velasquez, Matisse, Modigliani and Brancusi to the famous earthenware depiction of the Venus of Willendorf.
3 September 2016 – 16 October 2016 | Alcove Gallery | This new series of evolved and interpreted landscape paintings by John Eaden, uses the environs of Hawke's Bay and a recent visit to the South Island as a starting point.
14 May 2016 – 31 July 2016 | Holt Gallery | James Cousins’ painting practice pivots around questions of how a painting might function: how do we understand the status of an image? What systems guide our understanding? What processes could be used to disrupt these assumptions? Restless Idiom is a selection of Cousins’ recent work made between 2014 - 2015.
4 June 2016 - 28 August 2016 | Foyer Gallery | The Cubic Structural Evolution Project is a hands-on installation by Danish-Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson. Comprising thousands of pieces of white Lego bricks scattered on a large table, the work invites Gallery visitors to become ‘architects’ by using the Lego to create endlessly re-forming structures limited only by imagination.
23 July 2016 – 28 August 2016 | Alcove | In this work Juliet Carpenter builds a narrative around the consumption and regurgitation of image technology. Carpenter’s practice has an ongoing concern with the re-purposing of historical formats and the cycles of self-affirmation that occur through image making. In Silent Treatment history becomes unhinged and dissolves as voices are superimposed over images of nature.
30 July 2016 - 24 October 2016 | Main Gallery | This idiosyncratic look at the alphabet uses images and icons that Poppelwell has built up over years. Exploring the idea of the ‘alphabet’, the project is an acknowledgement of how in the context of New Zealand, Te Reo is entirely integral to how we think about English.
13 August 2016 - 13 November 2016 | Holt Gallery | Curated by John Eaden, this exhibition of large and small oil paintings includes Toss Woollaston’s landscape...
16 April - 17 July 2016 | Main Gallery | This vibrant exhibition shares the perspectives of New Zealand artists who have undertaken residencies in China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
27 February 2016 – 17 April 2016 | Alcove | Video by Shannon Te Ao, A torch and a light (cover), 2015. In the words of a pre-colonial waiata, the narrator describes the night sky as he yearns for his wife from whom he has separated and who is now with the elders of her whanau. We are privy then, to a puzzling act in which a figure moulds and shapes waterlogged towels, intentionally manipulating them into an ambiguous form.
27 February 2016 - 1 May 2016 | Foyer | In Lost World, sculptor Gregor Kregar combines structures made from recycled glass with large stylized bronze dinosaurs. Through this unusual juxtaposition the artist creates an environment to surprise and engage the viewer. Kregar’s interest in dinosaurs was sparked by observing his four year old’s fascination for these creatures.
November 28 2015 – February 14 2016 | Foyer Gallery | Endling is a term used for the last of a species or subspecies. Featuring a cast of handmade creatures, this low-fi, stop motion animation is part poem, part call to action, highlighting a most dire and immediate issue for us all – extinction of endangered species.
5 December 2015 – 17 January 2016 | Main Gallery | More than 50 lithographs and silk-screen prints produced by some of New Zealand’s leading commercial artists between the 1920's and 1960's make up the exhibition Selling the Dream: Classic New Zealand Tourism Posters.
23 April 2016 – 22 May 2016 | Foyer Gallery | Binding’s paintings are a response on a personal level to the battles fought in the First World War. Communicating the events through an on the ground perspective, capturing intimate instances of action and activity.
30 January 2016 – 3 April 2016 | Main Gallery | In commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the signing of Te Tiriti o te Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi, this exhibition features five Mana Wahine artists, all with reputations for pushing boundaries.
30 January 2016 – 3 April 2016 | Main Gallery | Emily Karaka’s exhibition Settlement explores the Crown’s settlement process, old land claims and Turton Deeds transactions that alienated lands and islands from the Tribes of Tamaki.
13 February 2016 – 29 April 2016 | Holt Gallery | Ghosting depicts the unsettling urban and suburban spaces of Hastings and Napier. Exploring the architectural environment over the human, Unverricht evokes a sense of the still empty night-time darkness that surrounds these spaces.
September 12 – November 22 | Main Gallery | Te Kāhui Maunga Kura Toi brings together the work of carvers, weavers and multi-media artists from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, to form a kāhui marking the tertiary provider’s 30 year anniversary.
September 12 2015 – November 22 2015 | Foyer Gallery | John Miller is one of New Zealand’s finest documentary photographers. In 2003 he received a Media Peace Prize Lifetime Award in recognition of his photography and its role in helping promote peace.
November 11 2015 – January 31, 2016 | Holt Gallery | Leaving war platitudes behind, a sculptor, painter, and filmmaker strike out separately into fields where images and words may realign themselves in the imagination, with the deed of history known as the Great War.
1 August 2015 - 26 October 2015 | Holt Gallery | In 1980, Denis Cohn Gallery in Auckland staged an exhibition of five artists who each showed five works. The artists - Bronwynne Cornish, Peter Hawkesby, Denis O’Connor, John Parker and Warren Tippett - shared a desire to abandon convention and approach ceramics from a new direction that was at some remove from the tradition of the craft potter. The works they showed were relentlessly non-functional and influenced by a range of philosophies and working processes.
4 July 2015 - 6 September 2015 | Foyer Gallery | Winner of the 2012 Kaipara Foundation Wallace Trust Award, John Brown is a sculptor, now based in Hawke’s Bay. In this exhibition Brown asks visitors to look at objects in a different way, with a selection of new sculptural work.
13 June 2015 - 30 August 2015 | Main Gallery | Tungaru: The Kiribati Project is a collaboration between two artists - Chris Charteris and Jeff Smith. Jeff, Chris and their families travelled to Kiribati in July 2012 to spend time with Chris’ extended family and to work on this collaborative project, which celebrates the culture of Kiribati.
28 March 2015 - 3 May 2015 | Main Gallery | Kupe Sites - Ngä tapuwae o Kupe | Landmarks of the great voyager - presents 36 stunning black-and-white photographs that show physical landmarks associated with Kupe’s voyage to Aotearoa. It also tells some of the stories of these special places.
16 May 2015 – 19 July 2015 | Holt Gallery | Michael Hawksworth exhibits a new body of work that includes drawings and collages alongside large-scale oil paintings. This exhibition links elements of early modernist abstraction with the science fiction genre.
11 April 2015 – 21 June 2015 | Foyer Gallery | The 2014 Adam Portraiture Award shows the best of contemporary portrait painting from artists throughout New Zealand. Selected and judged by Dr Nicola Kalinsky, Director of The Barber Institute, UK, this exhibition spans a range of portraiture from intimate personal images to large scale works of more familiar subjects. Finalists selected from over 330 entries are showcased, including the winning portrait Tim, by 23 year old Henry Christian-Slane.
28 February 2015 – 1 June 2015 | Main Gallery | Brian Brake is widely regarded as New Zealand’s most successful international photographer. His career spanned forty years, from the 1940’s to his death in 1988. This exhibition offers two slices from Brian Brake’s career: photographs of China in late 1950’s, and those of Japan in 1963 and 1964. These gained relatively little attention at the time, but today they firmly rank amongst his best work.
23 April 2016 – 29 May 2016 | Alcove | To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Doris Lusk’s death and the 100 year anniversary of her birth in May the gallery is showing her painting The Lake, Tuai 1948.
12 December 2014 - 1 February 2015 | Alcove and Foyer Gallery | The sculptural works of Ricks Terstappen are an on-going exploration of scale, form and colour. Whether abstract or figurative, each sculpture expresses Ricks’ love of metalwork and his in-depth knowledge of its properties and processes.
13 December 2014 - 15 March 2015| Holt Gallery | The team at Hastings City Art Gallery are excited to present a solo exhibition of work by Israel Tangaroa Birch - one of the country's leading contemporary Maori artists.
18 October 2014 - 30 November 2014 | Foyer Gallery | It is fitting that Peter Donovan’s ‘A Homecoming’ is shown at Hastings City Art Gallery, given that Peter’s first exhibition was held at a the 242 Gallery in Hastings in 1991, with Christine Conrad and Michael Smither. Peter was also a finalist in the Norsewear Art Awards here in Hastings in 2003.
15 November 2014 – 15 February 2015 | Main Gallery | Hawke’s Bay’s biennial regional contemporary art exhibition highlights the unique creative capital of our province, and challenges the audience to consider new perspectives on the familiar. An external curator selects the work for EAST and this year that is esteemed Director of the Centre for Art Research at The University of Auckland, Linda Tyler.
7 December 2013 - 2 February 2014 | The work of over 45 prominent New Zealand fine art photographers is gathered together for this exhibition. The result is a comprehensive exploration of a range of themes and trends which have emerged during the past four decades.
30 August 2014 - 30 November 2014 | Holt Gallery | F4 is an artistic collective comprising of artists Susan Jowsey and Marcus Williams, and their children Jesse Williams and Mercy Williams. This new project developed for the Hastings City Art Gallery sees Susan and Marcus continue to explore their unique family dynamic using photography.
9 August 2014 - 27 October 2014 | Main Gallery | This exhibition of portraits from the Dowse collection includes work by many household names including Rita Angus, Frances Hodgkins and Toss Woollaston. Elements of their works, like pose, gaze, style and setting are examined. The exhibition features hands-on activities, enabling children and their families to see how portraiture can convey the personalities of its subjects.
31 May 2014 - 7 September 2014 | Foyer Gallery | This exhibition encompasses Matariki, which is a time for reflection. The word 'atahira' can be translated as 'the day after tomorrow', and local contemporary Maori artists Raewyn Paterson and Emanuel Dunn invite us to reflect on our relationship with the environment and what we hope to do over the next year for our ecosystem.
17 May 2014 - 17 August 2014 | Holt Gallery | Momo kauae: moko kauae in contemporary art draws together the work of twelve contemporary New Zealand artists and two poets.This group of artists are all tangata whenua, connected to many iwi Māori throughout Aotearoa, some well-established and others emerging. The exhibition explores ways in which these artists have employed and referenced elements of moko kauae, the chin moko worn by Māori women. Through these moko kauae patterns, connections are made to whakapapa and whānau, mana wahine, mana Māori, ancestral stories, Māori world views, strength, struggle and identity.
3 May 2014 – 27 July 2014 | Main Gallery | Renowned New Zealand contemporary artist Reuben Paterson has developed a wide following in recent years for his large-scale creations in glitter and diamond dust.
22 February 2014 - 18 May 2014 | Alcove Gallery | Talented emerging artist Fiona Fox’s ethereal works represent an ‘unconscious language’ which is written in thread. Made of clay, thread and wire, Fiona says, “the sculptures are an act of notation through hieroglyphics that manifest a desire to be heard, not of the voice but of the unconscious other that resonates a collective pre-linguistic frequency.
1 February 2014 - 4 May 2014 | Main Gallery | This collection of painted screens, panels and drawings inspired by Gerda Leenards 2007 and 2008 trips down China’s River Li began in Guilin, sister city of Hastings.
15 February 2014 - 21 April 2014 | Main Gallery | This exhibition examines three decades of work by Kiwi sculptor Jeff Thomson. Known as 'the iron man of Australasia', the artist's trademark style came to the fore in the early '80s when he crafted a series of mailboxes from roadside materials.
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