Authors of Aotearoa focuses on the people who have shaped our country’s literary scene.

Curated by Liz Stringer Intern 2022 Brooke Pou.

Image: Susan Wilson, Witi Ihimaera, 2014. New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata Collection.

This exhibition affirms the pioneering legacy and leadership of senior Māori artist, broadcaster, playwright, orator, teacher, musician, and repository of tribal knowledge - Selwyn Muru.

Image: copyright Ans Westra, courtesy of Suite Tirohanga

2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the Fletcher Trust Collection, one of the most prestigious private art collections in Aotearoa. Perhaps best known for its landscapes and works of abstraction, the collection has long featured important figure-based pictures. Gathered Voices presents a selection of such pictures—pieces of national significance that tell rich and varied stories about this place and those who call it home.

Image: Robyn Kahukiwa, Aroha, 1971. Courtesy of the artist and Fletcher Trust Collection, Tāmaki Makaurau.

A fresh take on stories of Ngā Pākanga o Aotearoa, the New Zealand Wars, as portrayed in film. This exhibition shows the making and remaking of our history as interpreted through various films, television series, and digital storytelling formats. Through a series of portraits of people involved the making of the films, the exhibition highlights tāngata whenua agency on both sides of the camera.

Image: Courtesy of Aotearoa Film Heritage Trust and Te Tumu Whakaata New Zealand Film Commission

This exhibition, the Gallery’s first single-collector exhibition, pays tribute to the significant collection amassed by curator, art historian and long-time director of New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, Avenal McKinnon.

Image: Wayne Youle, Friends and Strangers (Avenal McKinnon) 2016-17 Courtesy of the artist and {Suite}

The biennial Adam Portraiture Award is New Zealand’s premier portrait prize.

Image: Sasha Lees, See Me
Winner People’s Choice Award 2022

Raymond McIntyre is one of the most distinguished expatriate New Zealand painters of the early twentieth century. Frustrated by New Zealand’s limited art scene at the time he left New Zealand in 1909 aged 30 to pursue a career in London and never returned.

Image: Raymond McIntyre, Phyllis Constance Cavendish, c. 1913 Collection of the GJ Moyle Collection Trust.

When photographer David Cook moved into Hamilton East, he was drawn to the colorful, creative and chaotic lives of his neighbours. With camera in hand, he explored back-yard mechanics to Sunday roasts, inventing an intimate documentary of a State Housing suburb in the 90s, moments before gentrification set in.

Image: David Cook, Plunket Terrace, From the ‘Jellicoe & Bledisloe’ series, 1993-1997