Whenua is a conversation about land: our use of it, our spiritual relationship to it, the varied depictions of it.

John Edgar’s Discus (2014), Craig McIntosh’s Topographical Objects (2019) and Michael Shepherd’s Middle-Earth (2016) and Measure (2016) are variously comprised of rocks and seeds. Neil Frazer presents the monumental volume and menace of the alpine landscape, Dick Frizzell man-made patterns and repeated rhythms, Karl Maughan the path revealed between those suggested and still hidden.

Wayne Barrar uses light with the lilt of prayer, Garry Currin invents as he asks us to look and to be ready to see what will appear, Paul McLachlan evokes myth and personality forged by place and time.

Michael Hight establishes surreal dreamscapes of location, the legacy of behaviour and the passages of time. Louis Le Breton’s lithographs faithfully render the 1820’s Bay of Islands. SL Thompson, Cedric Savage and John Weeks plein-air paintings contain strong sensations of the artist’s line of sight.

Similarly, Ross Ritchie’s River Road I (1992/93) filled with acute sensations of being there with the painting emerging as if from below the viewer’s feet, also contains direct conversations from the artist about the process of painting, the role of line and conscious intervention. Nigel Brown’s studio works are replete with his pleas to change the way we behave and look after mother earth.