Resident
Artists

Anton Parsons’ practice embraces a broad range of media encompassing industrial materials, readymade objects, photography and installation. Concepts are realised with seemingly insignificant ephemera that often accrue new meanings independent of the artist’s original vision when redefined, reconstructed and re-presented.  

Parsons graduated from University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Christchurch in 1990. His works are held in numerous public and private collections including, Chartwell Collection, Auckland, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, Christchurch City Council Art Gallery, Christchurch. Anton Parsons established his shared studio at Corban Estate Arts Centre in 2015. 

Pare Hauraki, Pare Waikato

Charlotte Graham is a prolific Maaori artist who has drawn upon her tribal heritage to explore critical issues that affect indigenous New Zealand society. Through a consistent concern for the social and political, her work has become a part of a wider conversation about the impact that environmental issues have had on indigenous people.  

As well as being a staunch advocate for environmental issues, Graham is an ambassador for art collectives such as Colours and The Kauri Project. 

Graham recently undertook a month long residency at Bosque Peheun in Southern Chile, to further explore indigenous ecosystems working alongside the local community, artists, scientists, educators and curators. Thus, adding to a strong body of work that proves the importantance of art to our society.

David McCracken’s sculptures elevate humble objects into memorable artefacts. He is interested in the role of performance in the production and reception of sculptured artworks. The completed sculpture is in itself a type of drama for McCracken in that it manifests various sensory inputs and personal responses. It is not merely an object, but is an artwork enriched with layers of interpretation acquired through the viewer’s gaze.

His sculptures have been included in outdoor exhibitions including Headland Sculpture on the Gulf, Shapeshifter and Sculpture in the Gardens. In 2013, he was recipient of the Parsons and Brinckerhoff Award for Excellence in Engineering at Headland Sculpture on the Gulf and winner of the Wallace Arts Trust NZ Sculpture Award. 

David McCracken is represented by Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland.

Originally from London, Giles Smith studied Fine Art Painting at St Martins School of art and became involved in decorative arts, spending time working for a high end gilding and restoration company. After moving to New Zealand in 1994, he began working in the Film and Television industry, and over 20 years has built a set of unique production skills which has seen him work on films including Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2 (2014), Pete’s Dragon (2015), Yogi Bear (2009) and Narnia: Prince Caspian (2007). 

His ability to work at a large and small scale allows his art practice to remain flexible, where he can employ the skills he has gathered over the years to explore new forms and subject matter of interest. 

Jennifer Mason is an interdisciplinary artist working across painting, photography, video and installation.  She is currently focused on oil painting where she is pursuing her interest in the skin as a boundary.  Her paintings have a strong sense of corporeality and the body is frequently exaggerated or at points of tension.

She is influenced by the tradition of figurative painters such as Euan Uglow, Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville and John Currin.

Jennifer is also a big fan of stand up comedy and an infrequent stand up comedian herself which sometimes spills over into her artworks.

She studied at Elam School of Fine Arts in 2013 followed by Glasgow School of Art in 2015.  Jennifer was born in Auckland and currently resides in Piha.

See more of Jennifer’s work at:

www.jennifermason.co.nz
instagram: jennifer_mason_mason

Ngāti Hine, Hokianga

Auckland-born emerging artist Jermaine Reihana studied Māori Visual Arts in Palmerston North, graduating with honours in 2012. In 2013 he was part of the “Te Atinga” 25 years of Contemporary Māori Art exhibition which has been noted as one of the most comprehensive surveys of Māori Contemporary art, leading to a publication that was released in 2014. 

Jermaine’s work hinges on customary Māori narrative and art conventions to relate with and navigate through the complexities of contemporary society. Jermaine paints native flora and fauna, rendered in a fine illustrative style while re-working traditional Māori narratives with a stylistic re-interpretation of kōwhaiwhai (painted scroll pattern), tukutuku (woven lattice panels), and whakairo (carving) design conventions.  With such adaptations he produces a personalised response to cultural practices, suggesting and interrogating issues relating the current social, political and environmental climate from a Māori perspective. 

In 2015 he held his first solo exhibition Te Matahi at Depot Artspace in Auckland and continues to exhibit nationally.

Born in the UK in 1968, Osmond studied and worked in London for over twenty years. He currently lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. He is the recipient of a number of high profile awards, among them the second largest sculpture prize in the UK, the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award; the Credit Suisse First Boston Sculpture Prize; and the Penguin Books Sculpture Prize. He has created artworks for a variety of clients including The Royal London Hospital, The Economist and most recently for Massey University’s Auckland campus.

Osmond is represented by Davidson Contemporary based in New York. 

Abstract painter Margaret Benn draws upon her formative years growing up in London in a post-war climate.   The daughter of immigrant parents from Jamaica, Margaret draws upon the feelings of fear and isolation that afflicted her parents and also haunted her throughout her years and adolescence, hindering her ability to feel included and immersed within her environment.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Design and Visual Art from Unitec Institute of Technology in 2012, Margaret moved into the Corban Estate Arts Centre cluster studios shortly after graduating. She has continued to explore her practice here and is a proud West Auckland resident.

Martin Selman’s works are an exploration of the potent visual and inherent qualities of marble.  Aligned with antiquity, artistic genius, and tradition, marble is, exploited by Martin for its symbolic value and transported into the current age by focusing on the banality of everyday consumption. Mass-produced items like bottles and cans are, canonised for posterity and contemplation.  Carved out of a medium steeped in tradition and history, they are transformed into sublime objects that are simultaneously historic and a-historic; rendered seemingly timeless by virtue of their medium, they are immediately reflective of the nature of our society. In a recent and major shift in subject matter Martin has become focussed on the figurative sculpture tradition, representing the human form with realism. 

Interdisciplinary artist Numangatini Mackenzie works in graf, tatau and mixed media installation. His practice centres on the exploration of urban space and the processes of building connections to his Pacific heritage and people. His research engages with literature on Oceanic art, museum collections as well as collaborations with living practitioners of art forms ranging from tatau, painting and spoken word to voyaging/navigation and street art. Numa often responds to these experiences and sites of investigation through large public graf installations, performance and printmaking. He is actively involved in cultural heritage projects, performative acti.VA.tions, research and community development in New Zealand, where he is now based,  and the Cook Islands.

Numa was born in Canada where his hunger to understand his culture grew, which prompted him to move the Cook Islands in 2009. His move gave Numa the opportunity to grow family ties and his understanding of cultural arts like tapa, tatau and voyaging.

My practice covers a lot of concerns, in which I make sense of through my art making. Some of the concerns I investigate encompass cultural cringe, structure, literalism, gender and identity. These concerns, or rather, search for answers are translated through a range of media in which I use to unpack culture and metaphorically represent this sense of unease and isolation I feel within culture.

The most evident of my concerns is my questioning of cultural structure and how this ‘set’ structure has transformed or rather moulded the lives of 1st generation New Zealand born Pacific Island children. Through my wide-ranging materials I reveal the concerns that I and many other teens and young adults face during our adolescent years as we start to mature and form our own opinions of cultural structure and how we compare our upbringing to those of others.

Quite simply I am deconstructing, simplifying and reconstructing traditional structure in order to make sense of its complexities.

Education:

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Auckland University of Technology (2011)

Masters of Visual Art and Design (2014)

Sistar S’pacific, aka Rosanna Raymond, is an innovator of the contemporary Pasifika art scene as a long-standing member of the art collective the Pacific Sisters, and founding member of the SaVAge K’lub. Over the past twenty years, Raymond's activities have made her a notable producer of — and commentator on — contemporary Pacific Island culture, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the UK, and the USA.

She specialises in working within museums and higher education institutions as an artist, performer, curator, guest speaker, poet and workshop leader. Raymond is an Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology at University College London and has been awarded a Chester Dale Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC this year.

"Ko Ngatokimatawhaorua toku waka, Ko Hokianga Whakapou karakia te wahapu, ko Whiria te pa o Rahiri, ko Te Ramaroa te maunga e tu ana, toku wa kainga ki Motutoa, ki te putake o tena. Ko Te Hikutu, Ngati Wharara me Ngati Korokoro oku whanaunga. Ko Ruth Woodbury ahau.” Translation: My bloodlines came upon the first canoes (waka) which landed in our sacred harbour Hokianga. The fortified village home of my ancestor nestled closeby, dwarfed by the mountain Te Ramaroa that stands behind it, at the base of which my direct line was raised. My family has roots to the east, west, south and north of this original landing place. Born in 1982 in Takapuna, Auckland, NZ, with Maori, Chinese and NZ European heritage lines. Ruth's interest and passion carries across a wide range of artistic expression in educating, curating and practice of visual arts with foundations in maori traditional weaving. 

Sculptor Stephen Woodwards practice is primarily interested in the political. “I present landscape and landforms as images to critique human nature; our need to overlay everything with notions of identity, or productivity or settlement. The consequences are environmental and these consequences issue from nationalism, greed, ignorance and also sometimes from culture or love.” explains the artist.  Working with an eclectic range of media ranging from ceramics, bronze, stone and volcanic basalt, Woodward’s sculptures are subtly integrated into, rather than being starkly imposed onto, the landscape.

Born in Quebec, Canada. He began marble carving in Italy by working alongside artisans tasked to scale up sculptures for artists including César Baldaccini, Barry Flanagan, Helaine Blumenfeld and Michelangelo Pistoletto. He moved to New Zealand in 1984 and since then has produced numerous public stone sculpture commissions in China and New Zealand.

Ngati Pakau, Ngapuhi, Waitaha.

A multimedia installation artist and designer, Tanya Ruka’s research practice explores her connection to a deep interest in the natural environment. Ruka is exploring this innate relationship through 'Matauranga Māori' ancestral migrational, seasonal & navigational knowledge, cosmology & mythology. Exploring the connection between humanity and land, the physical and non physical multi-dimensional layers. This layered complexity is the space the work seeks to occupy, through the exploration of the in between, the liminal and 'empty' space. Utilising the language of abstraction, weaving & carving by mark making, layering, texture, repetition, mirroring, concealing and revealing the poesy or visual flow by editing + pairing back. The respect for whenua land, the point of origin for the natural materials used and the kaupapa or process method, are essential to access this place.

Tanya is a member of the Circuit Artist Film & Video Arts Agency. A Master of Art & Design from AUT. Her work is held in private collections nationally and internationally.

Ko Kohukohunui ko Maungaroa ko Pūhanga Tohorānga Maunga
Ko Wairoa ko Waikato ko Mangatawa nga Awa
Ko Ngātokimatawhaorua ko Tainui nga Waka
Ko Ngāi Tai ko Waikato ko Nga Puhi nga Iwi
Ko Ngāti Te Raukohekohe ko Ngāti Tamaoho ko Ngai Tuteauru nga Hapū
Ko Umupuia ko Whatapaka ko Pukerata nga Marae
 
Tessa Harris holds a Bachelor of Maori Visual Arts - Whakairo from Te Waananga o Aotearoa and has been weaving for over 12 years.  Tessa currently works with various mediums including stone, glass, wood and NZ natural fibres.  Her stonework has been under the guidance of New Zealand Artist Rossi McCabe.  Tessa’s stonework features hand finishing with sandstone and her designs, patterns and styles are based off traditional Mahi Kohatu (Maori stonework). Tessa been involved in various exhibitions and displays, her work is sold throughout Aotearoa. 

Throughout Tony Brown’s practice, the artist has used his Māori heritage alongside a keen interest in photography, particularly of Māori people at work and leisure in our society. Tony currently combines photo-realism with references to traditional Māori art forms including, whakairo (carving) and tā moko (traditional Maori tattoo) in his practice, which typically culminate as highly rendered drawings or paintings. 

Tony Brown (Te Aupouri) gained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the University of Auckland, Manukau School of Visual Arts in 2005. Recent shows include: Swims On (2016), Upstairs Art Gallery, Auckland; Huahua Manu (2015), Corban Estate Arts Centre; Shadows of Legends (2014), Upstairs Art Gallery, Auckland; Mo Tenei Wa (2011) Upstairs Art Gallery, Auckland; and In Ya Face (2009) Bruce Mason Centre, Auckland.