The Whakatipu Chronicle (note correct Maori spelling) features a suite of key works by Karl Maughan, in acknowledgement of the just released Auckland University Press major publication on his acclaimed works.

There are new works by Phil Brooks, Terry Stringer, Aaron Scythe and Neil Adcock. Alongside important landscapes by Dick Frizzell is an arresting, celebratory still life, Step B (2019), and Brown Painting (2017), an iconic sign work revealing rural commerce and culture.

Lisa Reihana, recently identified by Michael Brand (Director, Art Gallery of NSW) as ‘one of the most influential artists of the decade,’ features with two mythic Pelt (2016) works and Flogging (2017), from In Pursuit of Venus [infected], which evidences the decline of Cook during his third and final Pacific voyage.

Paul Dibble’s virtuosity and symbolism is witnessed in five key edition works. Neil Dawson’s mastery of reflection and shadow sits beside the power and poise of Chris Charteris, the timelessness of Yuki Kihara’s lenticular photograph of Houngarea Marae, Pakipaki (2017).

Michael Hight’s Tapuaenuku: The Watcher (2018) is an outstanding painting. It turns the carefully tended apparatus box of a blade shearer into a memento mori, as if a rural altarpiece. The side panels depict a selection of Kaikoura alpine landscapes reminiscent of Victorian wall plates, those portholes sitting above cabinets of curiosities.

Nigel Brown portrays birds as the messengers of our times while Susanne Kerr, utilizing an elaborate language of metaphor, builds psychological and social landscapes where multiple narratives develop.