The Review 2019 includes new works by Phil Brooks, Neil Dawson, Darryn George and Karl Maughan.

There are numerous and considerable conversations going on across the exhibition as a whole about our physical and spiritual environment (Nigel Brown’s Arcadia with Kiwis; Neil Dawson’s spherical Florasphere) and about how we have accorded cultural significance with symbolic and exulted status to unique and distinguishing animals, places, plants and birds.

Michael Shepherd, recently the subject of a major survey exhibition at Waikato Museum and an important book by Elizabeth Rankin, examines the multi-layered myths of the Otago landscape. Phil Brooks’ stoneware bowls, assured and resolute, seem to have emerged from the landscape itself.

Robert Jahnke’s neon masterwork, Navarra Patiki Kikorangi, is an infinity device with the pattern explicitly referencing carving techniques and the symbol for flounder.

Lisa Reihana’s beautiful Diva and powerful Urban Warrior from the acclaimed Digital Marae series traverse time, place and politics.

Karl Maughan, in Parnassus and Rimu Close, is looking down at the architecture of the garden. Simultaneously abstract and representational, Maughan uses the particular languages of each colour to evoke and elicit, building remarkable sensations, musical tones and distinct atmospheres. 

Simon Richardson turns the epic and the ordinary into visual parables, dreams and moments of wonder. Chris Charteris’ Orator’s Tool speaks of all Pacific cultures, as does Graham Bennett in marvelously detailed iconography, shapes and patterns that talk of sea journeys and endless interconnections.