Ray Ching, best known internationally for his startlingly realistic paintings of birds, has given Aesop’s fables and tradition an entirely new location and cast. Now, the anecdotes and fables are told by the inhabitants of New Zealand, mostly birds and in this way Ching is retelling, reinventing and re-imagining them inside the cultural context, flora and fauna of this place.

This exhibition of eight works from the forty seven paintings completed (and featured in the accompanying book) demonstrates Ching’s rare visual dexterity; an astonishing mastery of disparate, complex elements; and a stylistic panache that effortlessly connects the riddle of each fable to the surreal, allegorical depiction established.