Current Exhibitions and Events
Kailey Carruthers
Far From Home
Molly Rātana
A true wairua
7-20 November 2026
Far From Home
Far From Home combines wearable sculpture with three new photography works created in collaboration with Gloria of Greymouth, located on the West Coast of Te Waipounamu. The title of this installation is a reference to the physical distance travelled to create the work and the metaphysical shift that occurs between the sculpture and the self when worn.
A multidisciplinary Canadian-born artist, Kailey Carruthers’ current body of work explores the use of fantastical ritual costume as personal armour/camouflage. Pulling from Canadian, Celtic, Slavic, and Appalachian mythology alongside children’s television programming of 1970-1990s, forest deities such as Bigfoot, Gille Dubh, Leshy, and Baba Yaga are central archetypes present in their work. Kailey will complete a Master of Fine Arts at Toi Rauwhārangi in 2027.
A True Wairua
As tangata whenua, we are woven in Te Kahu o te Ao: the fabric of the universe. Layer upon layer to make up the threads of the cosmos. A physical representation of whakapapa. A true wairua is the beginning of Molly's Masters project. Exploring her whakapapa through the process of stitching as an act of healing. Drawing from her whānau connections to Māori religious movements in the Manawatū - Rangatīki regions she searches to listen to histories that are often misunderstood.
Molly Ratana (Ngāti Apa, Pākehā) is a mixed media artist with a preference and quiet passion for textiles. With stitching at the heart of her practice as a way to mend the soul. Grounded in whakapapa, her work is about learning and understanding the past as a way to move through the future. She will complete a Masters of Fine Arts at Toi Rauwharangi in 2027.
Film Screenings & kōrero with Other Cinemas
9 November 2026 - Free Event - 6:15 PM @ Massey Cinema
Join us for a special free screening of I Carry It With Me Everywhere by Other Cinemas and The Neglected Miracle by Barry Barclay at Massey University, with kōrero from Arwa Aburawa, Turab Shah, and Hana Pera Aoake on Monday 9 November 6:15pm-9pm.
I Carry It With Me Everywhere was informed by interviews with first-generation migrants living in the UK. This short film weaves together the lives of multiple characters as they confront inherited ideas of belonging. The Neglected Miracle is a film that forms the culmination of five years of international research into the question of who owns our seeds. This involves interviews with corporations, scientists and everyday farmers in the developing world. This was shot over two years in eight different countries.
We are very lucky to be joined by Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa of Other Cinemas for a kōrero before the screening. They have come all the way from the UK, so don't miss this chance to hear about the film directly from its makers! This screening is programmed in concert with the exhibition Unseen. Unheard. Unarchived. by Other Cinemas and Friends, curated by Hana Pera Aoake. The exhibition is on at Enjoy until 19 December.
This screening is FREE, but please register HERE to book your space. Snacks and drinks provided! The screening will be held at Massey Cinema, Old Dominion Museum Building (East entrance): 15 Buckle Street, Mount Cook, Wellington (Block 10 Tokomaru, Pukeahu Mount Cook, Wellington) This event is supported by Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University. Enjoy's Public Engagement programme is made possible by the support of Wellington City Council.
The Neglected Miracle: Film by Barry Barclay. Narrated by Keri Kaa. A Pacific films production. Film courtesy of Aotearoa New Zealand Film Heritage Trust – Te Puna Ataata (ANZFHT) and Ngā Taonga (NT). Festivals: 1985 Wellington Film Festival (World Premiere), 1985 London Film Festival, 2009 NZ International Film Festival, 2013 imagineNATIVE (Toronto).
Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah are an artist duo based in London. Their work is focused on gathering people together to talk, to learn and to create films. This gathering is facilitated through ‘Other Cinemas’, a project they established in 2019 which regularly hosts community screenings and discussions, as well as a film school for Black and non-white communities. Their films reflect on the forces which shape the communities they belong to such as environmental harm, displacement and other legacies of colonialism. They are also guided by questions of justice and how those in the margins create vital spaces for resistance and alternative ways of being. By combining community screenings and a film school with their own filmmaking practice, they seek to think expansively about the potential of film as a tool for radical transformation. Their work has been exhibited at LUX, Humber Street Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery and as part of the Brent Biennial ‘22. Festival screenings include CPH:DOX, Dokufest, Hot Docs, London Short Film Festival (awarded Best Short Documentary ’25) and BlackStar Film Festival (Best Short Documentary 2024). In 2025, they were shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award.
Image: Other Cinemas (Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah), I Carry It With Me Everywhere, 2022 (film still).
Past Exhibitions and Events
Temporal
3rd Year Photography Exhibitions
Opening: 5-7pm Thursday 15 October 2026
Gallery open: 12-4pm 16-23 October 2026
Temporal gathers a group of exhibitions spread across the Pukeahu campus, showcasing the work of photography students coming to the end of their third year of study at Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts.
Centred in the Engine Room and encompassing Blocks 10, 12, and Te Pikitanga in the library, the suite of exhibitions engages a variety of photographic practices and processes.
Join us in The Engine Room to celebrate the next generation of photographic practitioners before taking a guided tour across campus to all the exhibitions.
Participating exhibitions:
CIRCLE CIRCLE X (The Engine Room)
April Brimer, Emma Faherty, Venetia Larraman, Frankie Simes-Foster & Ruby Barr
The door is open (The Engine Room foyer)
Renée Tuuta, Leo Liu, Alyisha Challis
Mātakitaki I Te Ora (Block 12, Level C)
Celeste Tui, Ruby Willis, Tyr Huang, Violet Valentine.
Unearthed from the Penumbra (The Cloak Room)
Melody Arawa, Jonathan Dransfield, Faith O'Byrne, Daniel Smith
Lines of Connection (Te Pikitanga, Library)
Ben Cockerill, James Claridge, Kane Wealleans, Neve Hunt, Olive Entwisle
Image credit: Faith O’Byrne
Tau Utuutu / It Comes Around
Tau Utuutu Collective
Huhana Smith + Ciaran Banks, Richard Reddaway, and Kingsley Baird
Opening event: 5 PM Thursday 10th September
H.E. Cristiano Maggipinto Ambassador of Italy in Aotearoa New Zealand will be present
Gallery Hours: M-F 12-4 PM, 11-25 September
Exhibition Catalogue available HERE
Venice is alluring, a phantasmagorical 'Floating City' that exists powerfully in memory and imagination. Especially, perhaps, for artists.
Last year our Tau Utuutu Collective was invited by the European Cultural Commission Italy to participate in Personal Structures Venice 2026, an exhibition staged alongside the Biennale di Venezia. Prompted by an image from printmaker and social commentator Gustave Doré and consolidated within tau utuutu, the process whereby tangata whenua and manuhiri share through oratory alternating acts of speaking, we responded to the exhibition’s theme, 'the intersections of people, stories, and disciplines'.
In 1872 Doré completed London: A Pilgrimage with a final engraving depicting an imagined scene of a ruined London revisited. The veiled figure of the eponymous subject, “The New Zealander”, perched on what could be a stone slab from the collapsed London Bridge, surveys the ruins of the once-great, imperial centre. One hundred and fifty years later we speculate, are we that New Zealander who sits and contemplates a future London Venice? If so, we bring baggage with us: desire, insecurity, art, resentment, noxious weeds, and olive oil. For as peoples of this place – Māori, tangata whenua, and Pākehā, here consequent to colonisation – we speak in return.
Tau Utuutu / It Comes Around invites consideration of reciprocity across time (history) to address issues of climate change, globalisation, colonisation, and cultural exchange. From our perspective, from Aotearoa New Zealand to Europe and back.
Image credits: Kingsley Baird, For Whom the Bells Tolls: The Return (top left, detail) Photo: Jane Wilcox; Huhana Smith + Cieran Banks, Some mixed media items for Te Toto o Te Tangata installation (right) Photo: Huhana Smith; Richard Reddaway (bottom left)
Ten Eighty
Matthew Dunne
A new body of work and an accompanying book by Melbourne-based photographer and publisher Matthew Dunne.
Floor talk with the artist 4-5 PM on Thursday 6th August (limited capacity).
Show open from 7-21st August, M-F, 12-4 PM, and special weekend hours on 8th and 9th, 12-4 PM.
In association with Photobook NZ https://www.photobooknz.com/
For more on Matt’s projects see his website: https://mattdunne.xyz/
Australia has an incredibly fraught relationship with one of its apex predators: the Dingo. In Ten Eighty, I examine the animal, its treatment since colonialisation, ongoing persecution and how it is destroyed. The animal is a problem purely because it attacks sheep and the reality is agriculture and conservation are at odds.This is a wide-ranging and expansive project, as the continued persecution of Dingoes occurs nation-wide. Australia is home to the world’s largest environmental barrier—the Dingo Proof Fence—which exists purely to exclude the animal. Several states in Australia, despite the nation leading the world in extinction, have legislated execution orders—requiring landholders to kill Dingoes if their presence is detected. In Australia, the tension between agriculture and animal is one that has always been ruled in favour of agriculture. Yet, as farming patterns change, relationships to animals evolve and consequences of exclusion become more pronounced this project is centered on the question of ‘is this the best we can do?’". — Matthew Dunne
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1989, Matt lives and works in Melbourne. His work is about trying to understand current day Australia through examining the past. By looking at where we come from, the absurdities, uncomfortable truths and unfortunate realities become more obvious, and hopefully a better future can emerge. Matt is the founder, owner and operator of Tall Poppy Press and lives on Wurundjeri country.
More on the exhibition HERE
Walking through every door available: 25 years of the BFA
Curated by Bena Jackson and Max Fleury
Featuring Liz Allan, Sandy Gibbs, Mike Ting, Elisabeth Pointon, Emerita Baik, Emiko Sheehan, Steph Arrowsmith, A.J Manaaki Hope, Miles Greville, and Siobhan Wooding
This year we are celebrating 25 years since the first students ventured into Massey University’s new Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Since the first semester, with little more than chairs and a slide projector, the programme has grown to occupy its own space within the contemporary art scene in Aotearoa. The 10 artists in this show reflect some of the diverse practices that Massey has helped to form. Their works are indicative of the interdisciplinary and experimental direction that emerged in 2001 and has remained central to the programme.
Curatorial text and list of works available HERE
Opening event 5.00 pm on Friday 17th July 2026.
Gallery Hours: M-F 12-4 PM, July 20th-31st.
Installation photo by Samuel Scully
He Kanohi Kitea - Exposure Exhibition
4 MFA Exhibitions in the Engine Room
Diana Adams, Rosa Wilson, Cerys Wiles, and Fiona Campbell
Read more on their projects HERE
Open from Sat 27th June - Sun 12th July
10-4pm daily
Performing Punctuation
Julieanna Preston and Anna Brown
Book Launch event Wednesday 17th of June 2026 at 5 PM, in association with Intellect Books (UK/US)
Exhibition on view Thurs-Fri 18th-19th June 10-3 PM
This book invites readers and performers to reimagine and transform the rules that shape language and identity. Performing Punctuation challenges the colonial legacy embedded in the English language’s use of punctuation.
Join us to celebrate the contributors, among them artists, performers, musicians, poets, designers, dancers, educators, literary scholars, architects, film makers, sound philosophers, and computer programmers who play humorously and tenaciously with the small but powerful marks that regulate, discipline, and structure how we write and speak.
Watch a conversation with the editors HERE
Julieanna Preston is a Professor of Spatial Practice at Toi Rauwharangi/College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Her practice spans across architecture, art and philosophy, interior design, building construction, landscape gardening, material processes and performance writing. Julieanna has delivered live art performances and lectured on her creative and scholarly works in Austria, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the United States. For more info, see Julieanna’s website HERE
Anna Brown is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based design researcher, educator and practitioner. Working with visual artists, curators, editors and musicians, my work investigates through iterative processes, form, materials and typography how the vehicle of the book can animate and amplify the content it contains. Anna is a Professor at Massey University’s Toi Rauwharangi/College of Creative Arts where she has taught editorial design, typography, visual communication and courses about the future of the book. She is currently the Director of Toi Āria — Design for Public Good, a research unit harnessing design for positive social change. For more info, see Anna’s website HERE
Zines NZ: Punk to present
Bryce Galloway
Book Launch event Friday 22nd of May, 2026 at 5 PM, in association with Massey University Press.
Zines NZ (punk to present) is the first extensive history of zine making in Aotearoa. The book is an oral history based on interviews with 50 zine makers operating between 1980 and the present. The book also includes hundreds of photographs of zine covers and spreads.
Speakers will include founding publisher of Massey University Press Nicola Legat and College of Creative Arts staff member, artist, designer, and zinester Kerry Ann Lee. Books will be available for purchase with the kind participation of Unity Books Wellington. An exhibition of related images with zines from Massey students will be open 23rd-29th May.
Read an excerpt from Zines NZ HERE
Listen to an interview with Bryce on RNZ HERE
Bryce Galloway is a lecturer at Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Massey University and a transdisciplinary artist with an enduring interest in zines. Galloway is the author of the long-running perzine Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People. He has co-curated zine exhibitions in Aotearoa and Germany. He’s also a committee member of both Wellington Zinefest and Kirikiriroa Hamilton Zinefest (which he instigated in 2014 alongside Kim Paton). Galloway is also one half of the band Wendyhouse and an occasional video artist. Galloway was born in Kirikiriroa in 1966 but has lived in Te Whanganui-a-Tara since 1993. He and his wife Jakki live in Miramar and have two adult daughters.
Tōwai: Between Forest, Mountains, and Ocean
Curated by Regan Balzer and Rubén Díaz
8-19 May 2026
Opening 7th May 2026 at 5 PM, please gather in foyer of Te Ara Hihiko (Block 12), nearby the gallery.
Bringing together Māori artists and the Sapara nation (from the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon).
“Knowledge does not remain fixed in objects, it circulates through the room as vibration, as rhythm, as fiber, animating the space as a living presence. The installation breathes as territory, where voices, memories and relations unfold and remain active.“ — Rubén Díaz
Read the curatorial text by Regan Balzer and Rubén Darío Díaz Chávez HERE
And catalogue of works and further writing HERE
Artists exhibiting:
Rubén Díaz, Kura Puke, Kurt Smith-Komene, Stuart Foster, Horomona Horo, Israel Randell, Regan Balzer, Matt Tini, Darío Santi, Ripanu, Jessica Santi, Sapara people, Doménica Landin, José Saca, Layqa Nuna Yawar, Polett Zapata, and Mikaela Montenegro
Camille Bleu-Valentin
Polynésiaphonia
14-24 April
Closing 23rd April 2026 at 5 PM
Writing by the artist HERE
Based in Nantes, Camille Bleu-Valentin (b. 1995, Paris) is a French interdisciplinary artist whose practice weaves together colonial histories, material memory, and geopolitical urgency. Descended from both colonisers and colonised (a freed enslaved woman and a French soldier in Algeria), her work navigates these inherited contradictions through sculpture, performance, installation, and printmaking. Ephemeral materials such as cast sugar, milk biotextile, and pyrotechnics become sites for reckoning with the Atlantic slave trade, migration, and ongoing conflict.
She is currently in residence at Te Whare Hēra / Massey University, Wellington, where she presents Polynésiaphonia, a solo exhibition rooted in her childhood years spent in New Caledonia, with the support of the French Embassy in Aotearoa New Zealand.
A graduate of the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes (DNSEP, 2018), she has exhibited and held residencies across Europe, West Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. Her recent projects include Chini Ya Ardhi (Vichwa Gallery, Goma, 2025), Paré! (Université d'Angers, 2025), and Sous la Surface (Galerie Hors Champ, 2024). She was awarded a public art commission for Lycée Colette Bret, Aizenay (2025), and was a finalist for the Prix de la Monnaie de Paris and Prix ICART Artistik Rezo (2025).
For more on Camille’s practice see her website
Scorched Earth
Opening 12th March 2026 at 5.30 PM
13-27 March
Essay by artist Holly Walker here
Based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Will Bennett (b. 1994, Ngāmotu New Plymouth) is a Pākehā artist whose vivid, dreamlike paintings merge histories, mythologies, and personal memory. Drawing on figures from Anglo-Saxon legend and the tuna of Aotearoa’s waterways, his work folds ancestry and place into layered imagery that hovers between the familiar and the otherworldly. Will is a BFA Honours alum of Whiti o Rehua School of Art. His recent exhibitions include Community (Envy, 2023), Fauxktales(Twentysix, 2023), The Bush Points Back(Kingsroy, 2022), and Formations (Webbs, 2024). He was a finalist in the Adam Portrait Award (New Zealand Portrait Gallery, 2014)
Will Bennett
Peter Simpson
Te mātauranga o te Pākehā
Opening 26th Feb 2026 at 5 PM'
Peter Simpson (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāti Tamaterā, Pākehā) is a Māori artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. His recent exhibitions include Three Approaches, Three Rooms, Gus Fisher Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau (2024); from elsewhere, with Newell Harry, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau, (2024); He Rāwaho, with George Watson, Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau (2023); Literature’s Arrival to the Pacific, Blue Oyster Project Space, Ōtepoti (2021).
Still image; Painting’s History, Painting’s Future (2024)
Essay by the artist here