Parkin Drawing Prize 2024 Finalist

Jay Allen

Seed Vault, amid concerns of flooding

Ceramic, underglaze, glaze

$4900  SOLD

The concept of seed banking provided the catalyst for this work, a rich symbol of our global climate concerns. My starting point was the Svalbard Seedbank, a bunker containing the worlds seeds, nestled in an arctic snowdrift in our rapidly warming world. What begins with finely drawn rows descends into abstraction and decay at its lower levels, as the water rises. Seeds sprout or mould, panels warp and become impossibly thin. I have used ceramic as a medium for it's qualities of both fragility and strength, and the length and care of the process required to bring each piece to completion.

 

Duncan Anderson

Coffee at work, three times - 10:25, 12:08, 14:53, 03.11.23

ink on paper

$5,000

The three panels in this triptych show three coffees made during a regular working day in November. They can be read as planetary or topographical maps showing the affect of small changes within similar actions. Like the position of the cup beneath the spout, how level I held it in taking the stairs down to my office, or how gently or heavily I put it down before taking a photo. We move through days through repeated actions but by the enlarging the size and increasing the focus of these seemingly indistinguishable moments the vast differences in them individually becomes apparent.

 

Tom Armstrong

Creatures at the bottom

Coloured chalk

$3,500    SOLD

 

Dave Ashburn

Pencil Drawing

Carved builders pencils

$3,750

I carve letters into the leads of builders pencils. I work with a craft knife and other small tools to create the detail that I am after. In this piece I have created my 'Pencil Drawing'.

 

Melanie Badenhorst

The map of Africa lost

Ink and quill pen, watercolours

$750

From an archaeological map from 1948, this work explores the primordial nature of the continent; showing its magnificent and terrifying creatures of the sea with minimal information on the map itself. Ovamboland in the far North is where the indigenous people of my childhood came from. I am a ceramic artist, and the word 'Ovambo' means 'those who made pots'. This tribe was dispersed and handed small lots of land, shown on the map. I wanted to create a sense of peace as well as tension, with the floating sea creatures symbolising the blood thirsty threat of invasion.

 

Jordan Barnes

Intrusions

Graphite on paper

$12,000

As an artist, my ultimate pursuit is to gain a deeper understanding of the human condition, aiming to unearth fresh perspectives about myself and others. This work delves into the collective anxiety of the modern world, shedding light on my own struggles with intrusive thoughts (OCD) and the persistent anxiety they provoke. Inspired by a visit to the Tate Modern in 2023, this piece depicts two potential newspapers from the day after my visit. It reimagines the front-page stories, envisioning how my 'intrusions' and common irrational fears might manifest if they were acted upon or observed.

 

Theodore Brookes

Early Days

Graphite and coloured pencil on paper, AIr dry clay and charcoal.

$300  SOLD  HIGHLY COMMENDED

I always hesitate to use more refined and expensive art materials since I was young, the pristine page felt too precious to waste, so my drawings have almost always been confined to cheap refill, with this work I wanted to break from that habit by using art paper in disguise. Reconnecting with my roots by recreating the doodle coated papers that covered my desk as a child. I have begun to embrace lowbrow art to reclaim the joy of creating I had as a child, free from thoughts of worth and mass appeal, finally having fun.

 

Kata Brown

Artist's Desk

(From 10 Years Old)

Mixed Media

$1,800

Artist’s Desk (from 10 years old) is a byproduct of years of work. It is the surface of my desk that I have used since 10 years old, and has been dragged from house to house, and has finally been given up. The desk has been underneath almost every single work of art that I have created, in the corner of every room. This work is an exploration of the depth residing in the objects we surround ourselves with. Through this lens, I invite viewers to recognise the tapestry of stories and memories that simple objects hold.

 

David Brown

Iterations of Solace and Pleasure

Stainless steel, Enamacryl and acrylic paint, acrylic, and aluminium

$10,000

Sometimes we get particular and can do something over and over again. This is certainly one of attributes of this work. It takes vertical and horizontal stainless steel rods positioning them in a reproducible 3D spatial system. When colour is introduced, with its conceptual reference, the system shows its possibilities. Patterns, discoveries, and surprises emerge from the resulting order and colour placement. Art makes sense! Satisfaction sets in, but then wanes, and the thirst for the next iteration begins. It’s good to get particular!

 

Kara Burrowes

Castemblage

Reclaimed wood, charred, in blackened steel frame

$2,600

'Castemblage' is a reclaimed wooden artwork that has undergone a series of processes. Primarily consisting of horizontal and verticals, diagonals disrupt the order with a distinctly larger piece boldly inserted towards the lower left corner. Once assembled, the work was scorched to create charcoal; a traditional drawing material. The charcoal was then rubbed into the work to darken it. It is this creation of, and then usage of, a traditional material versus the contemporary nature of this work that interests me. Framing the piece in blackened steel complements the blackened wood; a modern way to evoke the craftsmanship of blacksmithing and casting.

 

Beatrice Carlson

It flows blue

Burgees and Leigh English broken porcelain plate from 1890, waxed cord

$1,340

“There is a force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results” Mahatma Gandhi. Flow blue is the name given to the type of technique used for the blue glaze that blurred or 'flowed'. This found plate is 134 years…We throw away, discard, forget and waste. My work is about reducing compulsive consumption by focusing on recycling/upcycling and rethinking the notion of preciousness with the use of raw, second grade, untreated, imperfect semi-precious gemstones and pearls. (Wabi Sabi) and porcelain shards found during my “mudlarking expeditions”. “It is so pleasing to play with found objects,reducing them to their essentiality or change them for something else, pursuing or creating the story: The broken plate flows blue…literally. The impossible repair is replaced by the blue cords, lines after lines as if the sketch wants to find its way out.

 

Warren Chilton

Study in Empathy No'1

Mixed Media

$2,200

Empathy... Societies gilded standard for those without power.

 

Julia Christey

Silence of Birds

Found birds' nests, ink and water on bamboo paper

$2,900

This grid of nest drawings are part of a larger and ongoing inquiry into interconnected material agencies. I have collected birds’ nests in my local Waikato surroundings. Using the nests, ink and water as tools, I allowed them to make marks on bamboo paper in a series of experiments, using slightly different methodology each time. The resultant images delighted me, as the agency of the nest kept coming through regardless of techniques used. These particular experiments were made in the wider context of habitat loss due to human interference in ecological systems.

 

Felix Conlan

Eye Opener

Graphite Pencil on Paper

$780   SOLD  HIGHLY COMMENDED

This piece represents all the time and effort that my Sensei, my Mothers have put in to help reach my goal of taking part in a school trip to Japan in 2024. The experience has been life changing and I owe it all to them. The Eye is being pried open by two pairs of chopsticks, representing the impact the trip had on the way I see the world. The Sens?-ji, a Buddhist temple is depicted in the reflection of the eye.

 

Linda Cook

The Painting Stripped Bare

Mixed media on board

$1,400

The consumer market has changed; receiving a parcel is no longer a novelty. On opening a parcel, I look beyond the commodity to the intricately designed packaging materials. The raw cardboard surface entices my fingers. I embrace its skin-like qualities, soft and slightly warm to the touch. As I synthesize with the materials the salvaged cardboard reveals itself; we collaborate. The layers and cropped shapes overlap creating a geometric composition of forms. Each window within the layers suggests something more concealed beneath the skin. This is a world engulfed by comfortable consumables and we are complicit in its warm embrace.

 

Kyla Cresswell

Wetland: Kōreti VI

Silverpoint on Prepared Board

$850

Historically overlooked and liable to be drained and reclaimed, wetlands are traditionally not celebrated spaces. However as precious filters, habitats and moderators of the surrounding land, a wetland fulfills a vital role in the ecosystem. This work is an invitation to reconsider these places, to protect them. Silverpoint is a process of drawing onto prepared board with 99.9% pure silver. This medium was chosen for the fine line it allows. The drawn image evolves over time: the silver tarnishes a soft brown like the oioi reeds it depicts.

 

Deborah Crowe

Sightline Shifts

Archival pigment ink, pencil and marker on Hahnemühle paper

$4,200

It began as a small pencil drawing on graph paper. Controlled. Contained. Requiring concentration. Plotting points presented a way to order thoughts. Marking time. Planned rhythmic repetitive mark-making provided the framework, allowing space and time to engage in restorative actions. As working drawings emerged, connotations of drafting slipped into the allure of moiré patterns, then towards dense areas I like to think of as velvet. I often think of haptic experiences when I construct drawings – whether making marks by hand or digitally. I made this work to process, to bear witness, to measure, and to regenerate towards a new threshold.

 

Madeleine Cunliffe

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Pencil and gold leaf

$3,500

This drawing is based on an old photograph of my sister and I in our childhood home. Last year I returned there on a whim of nostalgia and discovered it had been damaged in a flash flood. Through the front window I could see a stained blue wall which had once - in brighter, more hopeful years - been lined with my mother’s delicate golden wallpaper. I suppose this drawing was born from an uncomfortable realisation of loss. Named after the Robert Frost poem, ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’, it represents my childhood, which now haunts the walls of that empty house.

 

Michael De Bois

Between Binaries: an Abridged Gender Identity Spectrum

Ink on board, mirror

$4,500

Between Binaries : an Abridged Gender Identity Spectrum This work explores both internal and external aspects of a gender identity spectrum. The range of gender experiences is large and often fluid, hence the use of a blank tile; included here to emphasise the often-inaccurate categorisation by society of gender by external appearance (who likes to be pigeonholed?). The mirror, works to place how one sees oneself on the spectrum; an internal reflection. The graphic use of male and female genitalia is not employed to shock and/or offend but rather as a powerful symbolic visual tool, without which genuine discussion about gender is somewhat restricted.

 

Cecilia Denen

Composition with landscape

Collage, ink, graphite, colour pencils, gouache on card

$2,500

It's about the one that escaped, it's about biography, it's about reminiscence, it's about observer and the observed.

 

 

Peter Derksen

Heatwave

Newsprint transfer

$2,400

'Heatwave' symbolically extracts the fossil fuel carbon from our obsessive & disastrous news cycles by ‘decarbonizing’ a single broadsheet NZ Herald. Every letter ‘c’ is scalpeled out, and embedded (using a phototransfer method) into a new paper substrate made from the newspaper’s pulped remains. The ‘carbon’ flows into forms drawn from aerial images of oil spills, but its particle-ness also references swirling microplastics in our oceans, bloodstreams, or collective consciousness. I thought of drawing as a material process that manifested the existential, environmental dread of carbon pollution, while also playing with the language of ASCII drawings, pointillism/pixelation, and carbon copies.

 

Anita DeSoto

Her Peace of Pink and Bite of Justice, after Corrado

Oil on linen

$8600

My work is a blend of postmodern consciousness and the tropes represented by European Masters. Through my art I aim to flip the narrative of women being portrayed as accessories, victims or pawns in a consumerist and patriarchal society.

 

Sam Dollimore

Projecting, again

Ink pen on paper

$6,700

I once read a study which compared participants’ self-reported ideas of how others perceive them against other people’s actual documented perceptions of them. The study showed most participants over-estimated how positively they’re perceived by others. A minority, however, actually came quite close in their estimations, compared to how others reported perceiving them. Turns out this minority are “mild to moderately depressed” people. Being a depressive person myself, sometimes I wonder if my very knowledge of the “depressive realism hypothesis” cancels itself out; that I now sit too comfortably in self-assurance that my idea of how others see me is accurate.

 

Cameron Drawbridge

Homage to John Drawbridge

Ink, paper, aluminium, glass

$2,500

I pulled my first professional print of John’s in 1988, when I was 13 (Homage to Malevich – Red). I have worked with his prints ever since. Sometimes, the inking of a plate and the subsequent print doesn’t turn out, so it is rejected. This entry is a case in point – The Party - didn’t make the grade, so I decided to use it as the basis of one of my own artworks. The print has been cut vertically and rolled, resulting in a three-dimensional deconstructed version of the original. Creating artworks like this one, brings me closer to my dad and I feel privileged that I can produce homage works, as he once did with iconic Malevich masterpieces.

 

Alice Fennessy

Sunday Morning

Pencil on paper

$1200

Sunday Morning delves into my experiences of everyday motherhood. This expansive drawing builds upon my ongoing exploration of the interconnected elements of surreal reality, physicality and emotionality within mothering. It shines light on the coexistence of both the unsettling and the sublime within my relationships with my children and with my own sense of identity.

 

Nela Fletcher

Tumour ballet

Ink on paper

$1,750. HIGHLY COMMENDED

“What do my tumours look like?” is the question I asked my surgeon after I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. I had the urge to see images, but somehow the files on the computer wouldn’t open. I started filling this void by drawing my own imagery. In December 2023, while researching breast cancer tumour appearances, I connected with a retired surgeon, who shared his medical knowledge. From there, my tumour drawings started growing, evolving and dancing. 

 

Peter Force

Riot

Charcoal, gesso and acrylic

$3,600

Inspiration for 'The Riot' came from a booklet about Communist Party leader, Jim Edwards, who was savagely beaten by police as he addressed thousands of unemployed on steps of the Auckland Town Hall in 1932. It's one a series of artworks I've been working on depicting civil unrest and protest in New Zealand during the Great Depression. As a boy, my grandfather instilled in me the importance of fairness and social justice. This artwork is a way for me to honour his memory and to shed light on a mostly forgotten time.

 

Stuart Forsyth

If I had muscles, I'd be a better dad.

(Attempts 1-3, 26/27/28 May).

Permanent marker on grey mount boards, video (duration 06:35)

$1,200

When your kid tells you out of the blue “If you had muscles, you’d be a better dad”, how exactly is one supposed to respond to that? Well, after years of soul-searching and trying to learn the art of forgiveness, I am attempting to explore this statement using artistic methodologies and the assistance of my 15-year-old teenager. Armed with a permanent marker, and piggy-backing my son, I repeat a mantra in written form onto mount paper until I can no longer continue, or until the paper runs out. How hard can it possibly be?

 

Karl Fritsch

Freeling

Kelp, graphite

$9,000

South coast kelp offers a endless variety of flexible lines. I choose and shape pieces that get washed up on the shore, dry and conserve them and give them a final finish by coating the surface with graphite to emphasise their quality as a 3 dimensional drawing. The work consists of multiple elements and is variable in size. I would prefer to install myself if possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Sandy Gibbs

E.1027 (two elevations)

Black embroidery thread on white linen

$1,000. SOLD

E.1027 is a modernist house designed by interior designer-turned architect, Eileen Gray. Built in 1929, its story is a catalogue of loss, having survived desecration by an obsessed Le Corbusier, wartime shootings, squatters, orgies, murder and near dereliction. But first, it was designed as a challenge to Corbusier’s dictates that a house is a machine for living; instead, Gray argued that ‘a house is a dwelling for people to live in.’ As homage to Gray’s empathy for people, my submission re-presents her plans for E.1027 as simple embroideries, drawings in thread, ‘taking a line for a walk’ into the domestic.

 

Robyn Gibson

Len Lye and Leonardo da Vinci - Red Line Motion

Wood, found object, pipe cleaner

$1,200

Len Lye and Leonardo Da Vinci - Red Line Motion The artist spends her time seeking out strange objects such as pre loved toys from opportunity shops. Finding a wooden reproduction Leonardo da Vinci model called Aerial Screw became the incentive for Len Lye and Leonardo Da Vinci - Red Line Motion. The artists descriptive title ruminates on simplicity and passion within the nuances of line as movement, the blurred area between static and chaos. A trembling linear construction enabled by the physical touch of the viewer.

 

Emily Harris

'When Darkness Steals the Light'

Paper collage

$4,750

My work contemplates mental health and the rumination of intrusive thoughts that take over someones mind. I started this work in the midst of heavy grief after losing my brother to mental health disease. The individual cutting and gluing of thousands of pieces of paper was a cathartic process for me; the monotony was meditative and gave me focus to remember and reflect on memories, missed signs and regrets. Each piece of dark paper represents negative interactions held onto over a lifetime, with conscious thought seized then stolen by dark thoughts. The white and grey tonal pieces represent the healthy brain and hope.

 

Sandra Heffernan

Life lines

Cultured bacteria (Janthinobacterium lividum) on organic wool. Autoclaved.

$960

The intentional, emphatic lines were drawn with living violacein pigment cultured in a lab from Janthinobacterium lividum, a naturally occurring soil bacteria. The drawing guided the pigment medium with a live force of its own combining control and chance. Created on the last day of a career the criss crossing and multi directional lines symbolise the uncertainty of a non-working future. Yet on the other hand the drawing is a positive nod to future sustainable coloration for food, cosmetic and textile applications.

 

Lesa Hepburn

Premonition

Kinetic drawing of black linen fibre in water with light

$3,800

'Premonition' captures the breakdown and death of my close friend's black linen dress in a kinetic drawing of linen fibre in water with a dancing light. It is my liminal vision of thirteen, death and rebirth, loss and decay.

 

Veronica Herber

Awareness, The key to it All II

Washi Tape and Graphite Powder

$17,747   HIGHLY COMMENDED

For over 10 years I have been exploring the infinite variables of layered masking tape. The tape I use is a special one, Japanese washi tape, a sumptuous organic material with an acrylic substrate rendering it eternally stable. This quality enables me to make permanent works on paper. Each small section is hand torn, following its own process, then placed to create a language of contrast, nuance and meditative meaning. The result is a conversation of repetition and chance. Recently I have embedded a patina of graphite powder which sinks into the paper quality of the washi, to create complex layers of sheen and shadow.

 

Jutta Humpfer

Play my Strings

Giclée Print 1/3

$1,200

Carl Jung once said, “…creation…is not accomplished by the intellect but by …play…”. My work is play and process orientated. I play by blending, bending, adding, scanning, enlarging, printing and re-printing parts of old fabrics, in particular out-lived pantyhose. I force them into new dimensions and meanings, creating new images that blur the boundaries between fiber and drawing.

 

Jutta Humpfer

Humba Täterä

GicléePrint 1/3

$1,200

Carl Jung once said, “…creation…is not accomplished by the intellect but by …play…”. My work is play and process orientated. I play by blending, bending, adding, scanning, enlarging, printing and re-printing parts of old fabrics, in particular out-lived pantyhose. I force them into new dimensions and meanings, creating new images that blur the boundaries between fiber and drawing.

 

Glen Hutchins

Night Shift

Graphite, acrylic spray paint and duct tape on paper.

$3,000

This work has been inspired by the landscape and the industrial area in which I grew up in as a child, Castlecliff, in Whanganui on the west coast of the North Island. As a child I would bike on what felt like endless roads, along the river and out to miles of beach. I was free to explore the coast, port, and industrial areas. It was all flat planes, long lines, and surfaces that were rough and weathered. Marks from the land, marks from industry. The work is spontaneous, random, direct, and playful, and explores the notion of space.

 

Adrian Jackman

Field Recording

Graphite and pigment on canvas

$5,000

I create paintings that explore themes around 'glitch aesthetics' and 'digital disruption’; forging new narratives that merge historical print media with new technologies. My work invites people to re-engage with the tangible world, while simultaneously reflecting on our digital identities and their impact on our lives.

 

Raymond Jennings

Christo's Studio

Black pen-ink, black pencils, colour pencils on stretched canvas

$4,050

Christo’s New York Studio – 1985. I have a long history of exploring the endless possibilities of ‘drawing’ . . . and with this work I have seen the expressive potential in another artists’ studio interior, with pens, pencils, and pastels dynamically recreated, spontaneously intertwined with shades of colour . . . reforming the structures and objects, spaces and depths of atmosphere without loosing the studios’ original reality – but transforming it through my own explorative vision of ‘drawing’, that leaves room for the viewers exploration and imagination.

 

Ella Jones

'The visual world is inexhaustable'

Graphite

$3,000   SOLD  WINNER

This body of graphite draws from the fear of habitualization - the conscience acceptance of day to day life. The work focuses on the sensation and ephemeral feeling of surrounding objects and transient moments. It takes reference from Joanna Margret Paul’s kaupapa of being alive to the world rather than merely being alive in the world.

 

Motoko Kikkawa

Many things happening behind us

Water colour on paper

$1,900

I do drawing without plan. I just let go and follow my own marks. Water colour with brush makes unexpected shapes often. I feel I am creating a life. It starts make friends and travels. While I’m drawing the back ground changes to field to in the river, some time in the see. How to made : I put water colour on brush first and make crush on paper. Then I extend it or add new lines with fine brush. Story grow and I imagine stories. The background becomes a field or in ocean or sky or in liver while I‘m drawing. It’s like dream I had while I was sleeping.

 

Verity Kindleysides

Ilsa 2 - The Yellow Wallpaper

Pencil on Card

$1,300

From a series of nostalgic portraits of my Mum. Following on from the drawing 1970s Tangerine Dream before I was born. Post my birth - Ilsa & The Yellow Wall Paper - invisibility.

 

Simon King

Waka Hourua

Mixed Media; Pine, plywood, canvas, paper, acrylic paint, oil stains, printing ink, charcoal, white pencil, muka

$20,000

The work uses the iconography of pacific voyaging canoes and vessel forms to explore ideas about journeying, and the storage and transmission of memories and knowledge of the voyagers.

 

Marie Lotz

The Red Sampler

Ink pencil and thread

$1,500 SOLD

My embroidery sampler in Red depicts an Irish immigrant A child, crossing the sea and cultural divide. Antique samplers were stitched by young girls to learn practical skills and values I draw and stitch to feel a sense of belonging The visual Poetry expresses shadowy feelings and fragmented memories In stained red stitches scattered across the cloth I stitched to think about where I came from How I belong here and to understand what my culture is now. Knowing where we come from and who our people are connects us to a deep anchor within ourselves. This is a gift.

 

Philip Madill

Soma

Digital Animation

$1,000

The work explores the question: can the immersive effect of contemporary digital media and ‘Mixed-reality’ such as animation, drawing and installation be viewed as a continuum from Nineteenth-Century pre-cinema exhibitions?

 

Lisa Matthys

Pick up

Brown paper shopping bags

$628

If a drawing is simply a line going for a walk (Klee) then mine is a clumsy waltz. Incumbered by a broken ankle I began ordering my groceries on-line. There was always a degree of shock when they arrived. Mostly because of how few items I had managed to purchase on my tight budget. On one occasion twelve items arrived (with a friend)in twelve separate brown paper bags. I couldn't help but think the picker was taking the piss. A comment on the state of our inflated food prices, excessive packaging and wasteful practices. Or perhaps they were annoyed at the low pay they received to ensure my items were collected in good condition? Not having yet succumbed to the need to eat said brown paper bags I've chosen to make a statement of my own. The bland brown paper bag, reconfigured. Exploring movement and tension and a need to break free from the surface, Pick Up is about cutting costs, gaps appearing in my pantry and hopping around while recovering from a broken ankle.

 

Rose Meyer

Tāmaki Makaurau’s 53 Volcanos

Ink on paper in bound book

$2,033

Hand-etched ghost printed topographic contour maps from Auckland Council’s GeoMaps, aligned with Dr Ferdinand von Hochstetter’s 1859 map of the isthmus of Auckland. What started as a wondering about the volcano outside my window grew into a way of wandering the isthmus through map lines and contour drawings, discovering limitations in the language of drawing to ever encompass something as vast and ever changing as the landscape. Here in book form, the maps are combined as one, each map when unfolded centred and aligned, a condensed landscape of line, mark making and history.

Tanya Milton

What the Persian carpet didn't say

Colour pencil and graphite on paper

$800

A Persian carpet is like 'god soup'. All that perfectionism, the poetic geometry, the wilful beauty, the fullness. The delicate tension of warp and weft. All that everything. Every hand of your mind must grab something and hold on. Fistfuls of sensory pleasure. Only silence is missing. I stir a pot of 'everything' and pour, careful to hold back. Cultivating emptiness besieged by form. I can provide the silence. The peace is B.Y.O.

 

Laura Mirebeau

Dispersion // Connection

Fine liner, black marker pen on paper.

$3,400

I make quiet abstract pointillist drawings. Dispersion // Connection recognises the physical laws that rule our world. It intuits gravitational theory and observes how bodies behave in the presence of other bodies. The scale and orientation are non-specific. Systems shape themselves, communities unfold, animated by inescapable vital forces. The universal is contained in the particulate. Above all, this work highlights the interconnectedness of all things.

 

Birgit Moffatt

Shaping Identity

Recycled hand made paper, muka (fibre from harakeke), earth pigments

$2,500

Shaping Identity is a process-driven installation that investigates the relationship between place, time and identity. Around 150 exquisite paper casts of original East Berlin cobblestones form a path-like image reminiscent of footprints. Some of the artist's old personal documents have been meticulously torn by hand and pulped; added muka serves as a binding element. Earth pigments foraged from various locations around Aotearoa are used to colour the paper. Together, they convey ideas of connection to a physical place, that continually shapes who we are. Moffatt was born in East Berlin and lived there until immigrating to Aotearoa in 2011.

 

Jane Molloy-Wolt

The Darkest Nights

Acrylic/Indian ink on vintage cotton, Japanese organic stain on Rimu rod, organic cotton hangers.

$2,000    SOLD

‘The Darkest Nights’ unravels a narrative of late-night conversations with my brother during times of unbearable suffering when he needed comfort and strength. Through the language of text and the repetitive process of writing, remnants of our intimate conversations and memories are recorded as a coded diary entry; allowing time to process the trauma and finality of his death and importantly the beauty and optimism he left behind. In silence, I scratch my bamboo stick and ink markings across the canvas reminding me of the larger scale of human vulnerabilities and suffering and the importance of human connection.

 

Jane Molloy-Wolt

Ink Script

Acrylic/Indian ink on vintage cotton, Japanese organic stain on Rimu rod, organic cotton hangers.

$2,000

Found letters penned by the painter George Thompson-Pritchard, detail an artist’s research of the ancient transcript, Magna Carta, sealed in a Runnymede Field in 1215. This prompted my curiosity of great uncle Georges correspondence serving as the preparatory stages for a painting, which, mysteriously, remained unfinished. In these intimate exchanges, I discover a profound connection to Uncle George, transcending time through shared sentiments and recorded conversations. The illegible, weathered ink script of this work derives from manuscripts, a simple reference to rediscovered histories and the importance of preservation.

 

Lisa Munnelly

Aether

Charcoal , acrylic ground on Paper

$6,700    HIGHLY COMMENDED

My relationship with charcoal as an art medium has been a slow burn, an enthrallment that has spanned over twenty years and ignited numerous projects. Being directly involved in the production of the charcoal utilized in this work has facilitated a deeper level of material connection. Here, drawing is an act of listening, looking, and, above all, care. The + marks in this work indicate cartesian coordinates, a reference to drawing as a mode of mapping material imaginings, where drawing in dialogue with material, reveals and revels in the properties and dreamy propensities of charcoal.

 

Stef Naldi

Restless

Collage (artist’s handwritten journal pages, fragments of coffee-stained bedsheets

$500

I lie awake for yet another night. Toss, turn - rinse, repeat. Fears and doubts spin endlessly in the merry-go-round of insomnia. When I finally leave the discomfort of my bed, I feel as tangled and crumpled as my sheets.

 

Paul Nankivell

Pianola Passion

Oil on panel

$560    SOLD

This artwork is created by re-purposing pianola paper rolls to make stencils. The technology was developed in 1895 and was a way of recording and reproducing music. I hope my artwork reflects the passion of those times in a contemporary way. 

 

Gill Newland

Five Squares

Acrylic, Belgian linen

$1,750

By removing weft threads, I reveal a secret of painting - how paint adheres to unprimed linen. Dotted lines, akin to drawing, are created. Gravity acts on the threads so the shape of the square is brought into question. The shape can’t be held. Process and material form the work, not any image already in the world. The threads hanging in front of the painted surface aren’t an illusion, they are part of the process. So too the shadows. The size of the “squares” affects how the threads fall and the extent to which the wall is revealed, making it part of the work.

 

Emma Page

Yellow Sketch

C-Type Photographic Matte Paper, mounted on Aluminium Dibond

$1,850

This work explores drawing with light through the interplay of colour and form. The image captures a moment and explores drawing as a space in which to imagine and sketch ideas. I was attracted to how the yellow colour emits light and suggests a spatial and sensory environment. When making this, I was also interested in presenting an ordinary material on display; and how this may encourage us to experience a more sublime perception of everyday surroundings.

Robyn Penn

Lawn I - The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.

Encaustic graphite on paper

$4,000

Imagine a world in which there is no time, only images. It is difficult. We live in time. Time seems to flow, and our present swarms with traces of our past. This drawing depicts a childhood memory of garden hoses and sprinklers fountaining cool fresh water to run through and cool off on sweltering summer days. The image is chiselled and formed from light; added to and erased until the image emerges from the remote past. It is then immersed in a layer of wax so that the memory is preserved.

Samuel Pepper

Ted

Colour Pencil on Paper

$1,700  SOLD   HIGHLY COMMENDED

Ted was adopted by my brother from a local farm after he didn't quite get along with the other farm dogs. I specialise in drawing New Zealand working dogs and while Ted no longer works on the farm, he looked right at home in this 1987 Toyota Hilux. A portrait capturing this moment seemed appropriate.

Brie Rate

Purau reserve stairs

Grass, leaves, sticks, seeds, bark, dirt, coffee grinds, hair, filing folders, string, embroidery thread, cardboard, egg carton, paper, ribbon

$800    SOLD

Contemporary human life is made up of ephemeral moments with lurking debris. In the face of climate crisis, it is important for me to question how we reciprocate the necessity provided to us by nature. What do we give the living world and what does it give us? This work incorporates human and non-human matter simultaneously in attempt to articulate this relationship, providing perhaps, a more realistic view of our shared Earth.

Debbie Reynolds

Footpath Finds

Pen

$1,200

This artwork tries to capture the beauty and intrigue in common, natural treasures that are found in our everyday environment. Using the meticulous technique of black and white pointillism each dot reveals the hidden textures and patterns that often go unnoticed. By focusing on these natural forms, I aim to evoke a sense of wonder and appreciation for the delicate complexities of nature’s designs.

 

Vicky Robertson

Bills to Pay

Laser cut coasters, pen

$3,000

In my dream I had to ask the landlord for permission to make things on his property. While I was writing the letter, the neighbour crashed into a parked car, he had been drinking and was mad at the parked car, then he went inside and his wife was mad at him. This piece followed 'The Ongoing', once the process was established, the experimenting began. All the coasters were sourced from Trash Palace and other second hand shops. The pen line-work on the coasters follows the thought processes, constantly changing direction, and yet knitting together in unison. This handbag is for collecting the cash to pay the bills, or a special night out - whichever comes first.

Clark Roworth

Crush- from my sketchbook

Graphite

$1900

In my drawing 'Crush- from my sketchbook', I explore the emotive power of hands in action. The piece captures a moment of force, depicted through the interplay of collaged hands in motion, crushing and twisting the cardboard juice box. Through this composition, I aim to evoke a sense of urgency and thoughtless-ness. The tearing and twisting of the juice box symbolize a forceful disruption of the mundane. Being drawn on a torn-out page from my sketchbook serves as both a literal and metaphorical foundation for the artwork. It questions what makes something worthless, and what makes something to be preserved. It represents the urgency of the creative process—the initial sparks of inspiration captured on paper. I aim to celebrate the spontaneity of my art.

David Shennan

Before Peace . . . Chaos

Watercolour on watercolour paper

$2,875

This drawing speaks of the times we live in. Regardless of how close we may think or believe we are to forming or reaching a peaceful state, either individually or collectively, peace is always under threat. The notion of how close we consider we may be to achieving a formed image of the ideals which we aspire to, it seems so obvious, either on the surface, or within a deeper space, that we are at a great distance from being satisfied, content and at peace with what we have and what humanity could share. Before Peace . . . Chaos.

Anne Shirley

The Messages

Photography

$1,200  SOLD

Family photographs have been ritualised in the way it has been practiced and the way it documents ritual. These albums hold secrets, tragedies and emotionally charged moments where the play and the imperative are intertwined with the 'substitute for what time has destroyed.’ The deliberate placement of disparate forms within domestic environments requires a rethink about ritual as either a transformative or normative practice.

Morag Stokes

Ostinato

Graphite and Chinese Ink on Yupo

$1,800  HIGHLY COMMENDED

I have been making drawings using graphite and Chinese ink applied with inflated ribbed condoms for some years now. Over this time, I have become increasingly aware that there are patterns and rhythms that are very characteristic of the materials I use and the physicality of my application. I work with dance-like movements and satisfactory drawings only emerge after I’ve been in a rhythmic and meditative state for some time, usually hours. Like a repeated riff in music, this improvised work represents the lyrical patterning, gestures and forms that underpin my approach to drawing in this medium.

Jarad Tom

Looking Out Through Nine Body Holes Drawn With My Mother Pen

Graphite on paper, LED lights, transformer, electrical wire - on aluminium composite

$7000

Looking Out Through Nine Body Holes Drawn With My Mother’s Pen By Jarad Tom 'Looking Out Through Nine Body Holes Drawn With My Mother’s Pen’ is a metaphysical topological map of the internal space and proportions of my own body. An undulating graphite laden ontological paper dermis, with 9 incised holes, representing the 9 perceptive openings. These holes are illuminated with ambient light, like windows to the external world. The work in part relates to the notions I have adopted over time about art making and being an artist. Such as the belief that proper pencil shading should be applied in an even handed uniform manner, so as to impart no obvious graphite sheen and that its application should not damage the surface of the paper. In contrast here I use the graphite correctly, “incorrectly”. However, ‘Looking Out Through Nine Body Holes Drawn With My Mother’s Pen’ also becomes a kind of existential Möbius strip, with wider connotations about the interactions of being overlapping.

Debbie Tubb

Obedient Resistance

Acrylic, thread and fabric on canvas

$850

'Obedient Resistance' responds to memories and my aim to create spaces where generational narratives converge and intersect. Stories contained in the fabrics stacked in my studio begin a conversation, drawing inspiration from the rich tapestry of human experience. Followed by disturbance of unexpected colour, seemingly irregular stitched lines become an extension of drawing ideas together. Application of paint, cutting, piecing and stitching constructs a reimagined history and reconnection to the past. With the traditional picture plane format construed, the drawing feels like it could be formed into varying shapes, and conversations.

Anna Turnbull

Portrait (after Corot)

Cotton pads, Cotton, residue of beauty products

$1,200

Anna Turnbull is an ?tautahi based artist who collects the refuse from her job in the beauty industry to repurpose into work that reflects on traditional artmaking conventions. 'Portrait (after Corot)' was drawn by laying stained makeup remover pads over a print of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s 'Woman with a Pearl' and then sewing them together.

Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris

In No Small Measure

Plum tree branches, human hair, sensor, microprocessor, radio link, electronics, sound, fragrance

$9,000

The work expresses changes in atmospheric humidity. The tower is made from tree branches and human hair responding to humidity, building, when undisturbed, generative sound created from 3 differential equations derived from a simplified model of convection in the earth's atmosphere. We have drawn material from living systems combined with sensors and algorithmic interpretation to explore fugitive senses referring to old powers, other knowledge systems and common alchemy that affect mind and emotions.  In some cultures long hair is an extension of the nervous system, the physical manifestation of thoughts and emotions tuned into minute changes in circumstances and chthonic forces.

Raewyn Turner

Your Name is Like Perfume

Paj Silk, silk thread, embedded with an oil slick

$4,000

The work expresses changes in atmospheric humidity. The tower is made from tree branches and human hair responding to humidity, building, when undisturbed, generative sound created from 3 differential equations derived from a simplified model of convection in the earth's atmosphere. We have drawn material from living systems combined with sensors and algorithmic interpretation to explore fugitive senses referring to old powers, other knowledge systems and common alchemy that affect mind and emotions.  In some cultures long hair is an extension of the nervous system, the physical manifestation of thoughts and emotions tuned into minute changes in circumstances and chthonic forces.

Guy van der Wilt

A house for Guy

Graphite and Charcoal on Mylar Drafting Film

$1,500

This plan drawing reimagines an iconic crane as an artist residence for Guy Ngan. The 1950’s level luffing crane operated on rails alongside Shed 6 on Wellington’s Queens Wharf but has been disused for decades. The crane could serve as a lifting system for supplies, materials, and sculpture, up to a landing pad on the roof of Shed 6. The constraints of the small crane cab demand a merging of life and art. Ngan might be carving away stone while he waits for an egg to boil or showering while the furnace melts brass in the corner of the bathroom.

Celia Walker

Drawing Breath

Coal dust pigment from the Maramarua coal mine, stencil and monotype on paper

$1,200

My neighbour burns coal to heat her home, the taint noticeable on winter nights. This evokes memories of my childhood home, heated by coal from the same deposit sourced for this work. The drawn-out process of scaling back our fossil fuel use is frustrating, both for the far-reaching consequences of carbon emissions, but also for the pervasion of black carbon particulate matter, a stealthy polluter of our bodies. In a literal sense, this is a drawing of what pollutants a breath might contain, but also seeks to suggest a collective drawing of breath, and the need for urgent change.

John Ward Knox

No title

Ballpoint pen

$1,800   SOLD   HIGHLY COMMENDED

This artwork is not lightfast. Exposed to daylight it will fade. First the snow, the ice. Then the atmosphere. Then the rock. Lastly, the memory. It is a drawing meant to tell it's story in time.

Clara Wells

Me, Him and the Seismograph

Graphite on paper

$2,700

Like many of my recent works this piece comes out of the necessity to keep creating whilst working within the constraints of parenting. Reflecting my background in hand-drawn animation, the repetitive lines create a seismograph-like documentation of the struggle of consistency and the continual push forward of time whilst raising a toddler. The upper text is my raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness whilst creating the work. The lower text documents my son’s interactions with me as I work. The drawing attempts to capture a real-time documentation of the internal and external factors of parenting through physical connection and internal dialogue.

Kathryn Wightman

Disrupted

Glass

$4,600

Tracking the rhythm of motherhood through glass, hand-pulled and stretched glass cane bent through heat and gravity to create a series of drawings that embody the tension and fluidity of daily life. Each rod, a sketch in space, crafted in brief snatched moments of respite, calms the chaotic mind. Displayed in a line, the abstract forms invite contemplation, each one a fleeting thought, collectively mapping the fragmented passage of time. The shapes, like indecipherable words, capture the stop-and-start rhythm of motherhood. These moments of creation, though brief, are grounding, reflecting the delicate balance between the demands of children and the need for artistic expression.