Being shown simultaneously all over the world and being featured as the central work at the Oceania exhibition opening at the Royal Academy in London in late September, Lisa Reihana’s video work In Pursuit of Venus (Infected) is openly acknowledged as the single most important work made by a NZ artist this century. The portrait work Captain James Cook – Male (In Pursuit of Venus) (2016) and the panoramic landscape of Cook’s Folly (2017) are directly derived from that especially acclaimed work.

Nigel Brown’s Huia (2016), Environment (2016) and Biosphere Crisis (2015) are visual poems celebrating our unique flora and fauna while reminding that our stewardship must be constant and ever-better.

In two outstanding landscapes, Misty Barn (2015) and Misty Morning on the Forgotten Highway (2015), Dick Frizzell delivers the mutability of the air, the sensations of place and time passing.

The mesmeric masterpiece by Chris Heaphy The Floating World (2017) is a beguiling kaleidoscope of spiralling repeated patterns and images which explicitly reference his own career, while directly engaging with metaphoric symbols of cultures and histories. It also becomes the iris of an eye looking back at the viewer.

The Leafless Grove (2016) and The Wanderer (2016) are illuminated parables of spiritual belief that have the wondrous language of theatre and the spaces of dream. Rose Bud #1 (2013) is further testimony to Susanne Kerr’s rare ability to use absence as a key compositional device alongside remarkable drawing disciplines.

Ann Robinson’s Ice Bowl # 89 must be acknowledged for what it is: a museum standard, signature work that alters colour dramatically under different light. Geometric Vase (Pale Uranium) (2016) is equally significant and transformative, where the internal form hovers and floats in an advancing/receding space.

Currently in New York as the Premier Wallace Award recipient, Andy Leleisi’uao’s unique, distinctive paintings are accumulative narratives of symbolic human endeavour which seamlessly traverse cultures and place.

Te Rongo Kirkwood’s Whiwhi Part III (Future) (2016) combines myth and culture, the traditional cloak form, exceptional craftsmanship, abstracted pattern and diverse materials into a sculptural object that talks right across time.

Spring Catalogue 2018 also features major sculptures by Neil Dawson, Chris Charteris, John Edgar and Graham Bennett.