Terry Stringer, 'Remember', 2023, Bronze, Edition 2/2
Photo Credit
Fatu Feu’u, 'OLA', 2020, Acrylic on canvas
Photo Credit
Nigel Brown, 'Tables Triptych', 2021-2022, Acrylic on canvas
Photo Credit
Aroha Gossage, 'Wāhi tapu - Sacred Place', 2022, Oils on board
Photo Credit
Andy Leleisi'uao, 'Heterodox Together', 2023, Acrylic on canvas
Photo Credit
Nicola Bennett, 'When Friends Come Over', 2023, Oil & mixed media on canvas
Photo Credit
Terry Stringer
Terry Stringer is widely recognised as one of New Zealand's leading sculptors. Grounded in elements of classical statuary, Stringer’s sculptures acknowledge these traditions, yet shift their rules of form and proportion to create works that are both familiar and strange. His haunting, perplexing sculptures have long toyed with ideas of reality. His shifting forms, which reveal different facets as the viewer travels around them, are, in a way, analogous to the constant redefinition and refinement of what it means to be real and the essence of truth.
Terry Stringer is represented in all major public collections in New Zealand. His works are in many private collections in New Zealand and abroad. He is well known for large-scale public sculpture commissions, such as Aotea Square Water Sculpture, Auckland 1979; Grand Head, Wellington 1987; Risen Christ, Cathedral Square, Christchurch 1999/2000; The World Grasped, New Market, Auckland 2006; and Dance to the Music of Time, Nelson, 2012. Stringer was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to sculpture in 2013.
Fatu Feu’u
Fatu Feu’u is an internationally renowned artist – acknowledged as both a leader and mentor within the Pasifika arts community. He has been pivotal in shaping the interest in contemporary Pacific art globally and nurturing a generation of Pacific artists locally. In October 2022 Feu’u was awarded the Senior Pacific Artist Award by Creative New Zealand, for his outstanding contribution to art and his role as a leader within the Pacific arts community.
Feu’u grew up in the village of Poutasi, in Western Samoa, immigrating to New Zealand in 1966. Since becoming a full-time artist in 1988, his paintings, woodcut prints, bronze and wooden sculptures are now held in public and private collections around the world. He was the first artist of Pacific heritage awarded the James Wallace Art Award (1995) and the New Zealand Order of Merit for his “Achievements in Art” (2001).
Feu’u gains inspiration from Polynesian art forms, such as siapo (bark/tapa cloth), tatau (tattooing), weaving, carving and ceremonial mask making. His works frequently blend traditional and contemporary elements, incorporating a range of influences, inspirations, techniques and motifs from Samoa and Aotearoa and more generally from Euro-American to Pacific cultures. Feu’u’s distinctive style sees him recognised as one of Aotearoa’s leading Pacific artists.
This year Feu’u has once again joined forces with the international company, Specsavers, as Patron for the Fred Hollows Foundation New Zealand. Limited edition frames (which have imagery from a painting included in his new series, Protection of the Pacific Ocean) will be available in Specsavers’ stores nationwide from November 2022. A donation from each frame that is sold, will enable someone blinded by cataracts to have sight.
Fa’asamoa is the unifying element of Feu’u’s work. The term fa’asamoa is generally defined as “the Samoan way”. The social structure of Samoan society is held together (and actively maintained) by an adherence to unwritten, but understood cultural conventions.
Nigel Brown
For more than forty years, Nigel Brown's paintings and prints have emphasised his vision of a New Zealand identity.
Brown has a systematic and workmanlike approach to painting. He works from an initial concept, which is the result of reading and extensive research. Sketches, photographs and other sources are used as a visual back up to develop specifics, leading to works on paper and trial paintings. The artist works from a gesso ground on which he applies a base coat of yellow ochre. The main ideas and words of each work are then sketched in by brush, followed by the initial lines and tones, and the first of five layers or more of paint.
Brown directly and selectively employs history, literature and politics as devices in his artworks. He also uses words in his paintings, a technique that was heavily influenced by the English poet and painter William Blake. At Elam, Colin McCahon suggested that Brown contain his text in a border or boundary, a technique he still employs today.
Brown has received numerous awards throughout his career including; the QEII Arts Council Grant (1981), Inaugural Artists to Antarctica Award (1998) and in 2004 Brown was awarded the ONZM for services to painting and printmaking. In 2009, The Brown Years, an exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery, celebrated the formative years of the artist’s career. In 2011 he was chosen to participate in The Depot’s Cultural Icons project. The project celebrated individuals who had contributed significantly to New Zealand’s creative landscape.
Brown has exhibited extensively in public and private galleries throughout New Zealand
Aroha Gossage
Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Ati Awa
Aroha Gossage’s next exhibition is due to open at ARTIS Gallery on 9th June 2020.
Gossage’s paintings seek to connect with Tupuna and the past. Her landscapes are located in Pakiri and Hauturu (Little Barrier), physically, spiritually and conceptually.
Much of the conceptual foundation of her art Gossage attributes to her mother, and to a childhood spent learning how to live with and from the land – collecting and propagating native seeds, diving for kina and paua, fishing in the river. ‘She gifted me with a childhood living closely connected to our environment in Pakiri,’ Gossage says.
Gossage incorporates kokowai (earth) into her paintings, along with oil paints. She seeks kokowai out because of its ‘gentle purity’ in handling as well as its ‘unspoken power’ visually. Gossage collects the medium herself, allowing her time on the land, thinking and exploring. “These rich earth colours you can’t buy in a tube. I know where to go to get rich reds, up by the dam. There are pure whites and blues if you dig a metre down in a special spot under our bridge. The ochres are on the corner by the gravel road up by my auntie’s place, and I find lovely greys at our waterfall‘.
The sense of light in her work results from manoeuvring oil pigment on board, to create what she calls ‘soft hazy gradients’. When the paint dries there are unprecedented beautiful effects that happen between the solvent and the pigment that give a likeness of atmosphere within her compositions. The sanding between each coat – to create a fine surface with a silky finish – can also achieve effects like the stippled sky, seen in a number of her compositions.
Andy Leleisi’uao
One of the most significant Pacific artists living and working in New Zealand today, Andy Leleisi’uao has been represented by ARTIS Gallery since February 2020. In 2021 Leleisi’uao was awarded the Senior Pacific Artist Award by Creative New Zealand.
Immigrant communities and their experiences are central to Leleisi’uao’s works. An “artist of diaspora”, (whose family migrated from one part of the world to another) his work is reflective of his experience as a New Zealand born Samoan.
Leleisi’uao often paints in series and seen together, the paintings may be viewed as an extended narrative; taken individually, each painting provides an intimate view of a world that is at once alien and very familiar. Recurring motifs throughout his works provide visual touchstones for viewers and remind us of the inherent humanity of the figures depicted and the universality of their struggle.
Andy Leleisi’uao’s work is included in the permanent New Zealand collections of Pataka Museum Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, the Chartwell Collection and the Wallace Arts Trust collection, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney and the Museum of Ethnography, Frankfurt, Germany.
Nicola Bennett
Nicola Bennett joined ARTIS Gallery in December 2023 and will be presenting her first solo exhibition at Artis during 2024.
Originally from the UK, Nicola, now based in Okere Falls, offers a unique sensory depth within her art. Her paintings celebrate the sensory intricacies of cooking with everyday ingredients - think mushrooms, tomatoes, aubergines, avocados, and apricots.
Her approach intertwines colour with flavour, intertwining the sensory experiences of cooking and painting. She harmonises colours by intuitively mixing them, often painting directly on ingredients to capture their essence. Her process is organic, allowing paintings to evolve naturally, sometimes diverging from initial expectations.
Drawing inspiration from the likes of chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, local farms and local chefs, her works are an exploration of synaesthesia - where multiple stimuli merge into one painting that becomes a sensory journey. In this way, when her kitchen and painting studio converge, it becomes a space where ingredients inspire both culinary creations and vibrant abstract paintings.
Nicola's formal training includes a BFA (Hons) from Leeds in the UK and an MFA First Class Hons from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design.
ARTIS Gallery has been operating as a dealer gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, since 1984. A contemporary gallery with a strong exhibition focus, ARTIS represents a diverse range of leading New Zealand artists, many of whom have achieved international acclaim.
ARTIS is one of New Zealand’s leading sculpture galleries and we feature important large works by our sculptors on the plinth located outside, at the front entrance to the Gallery. Situated beneath ARTIS Gallery is a large open plan stockroom and viewing space. Known as the BASEMENT Gallery, this area gives our artists the opportunity to continuously have their works on display.
Terry Stringer
Terry Stringer is widely recognised as one of New Zealand's leading sculptors. Grounded in elements of classical statuary, Stringer’s sculptures acknowledge these traditions, yet shift their rules of form and proportion to create works that are both familiar and strange. His haunting, perplexing sculptures have long toyed with ideas of reality. His shifting forms, which reveal different facets as the viewer travels around them, are, in a way, analogous to the constant redefinition and refinement of what it means to be real and the essence of truth.
Terry Stringer is represented in all major public collections in New Zealand. His works are in many private collections in New Zealand and abroad. He is well known for large-scale public sculpture commissions, such as Aotea Square Water Sculpture, Auckland 1979; Grand Head, Wellington 1987; Risen Christ, Cathedral Square, Christchurch 1999/2000; The World Grasped, New Market, Auckland 2006; and Dance to the Music of Time, Nelson, 2012. Stringer was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to sculpture in 2013.
Fatu Feu’u
Fatu Feu’u is an internationally renowned artist – acknowledged as both a leader and mentor within the Pasifika arts community. He has been pivotal in shaping the interest in contemporary Pacific art globally and nurturing a generation of Pacific artists locally. In October 2022 Feu’u was awarded the Senior Pacific Artist Award by Creative New Zealand, for his outstanding contribution to art and his role as a leader within the Pacific arts community.
Feu’u grew up in the village of Poutasi, in Western Samoa, immigrating to New Zealand in 1966. Since becoming a full-time artist in 1988, his paintings, woodcut prints, bronze and wooden sculptures are now held in public and private collections around the world. He was the first artist of Pacific heritage awarded the James Wallace Art Award (1995) and the New Zealand Order of Merit for his “Achievements in Art” (2001).
Feu’u gains inspiration from Polynesian art forms, such as siapo (bark/tapa cloth), tatau (tattooing), weaving, carving and ceremonial mask making. His works frequently blend traditional and contemporary elements, incorporating a range of influences, inspirations, techniques and motifs from Samoa and Aotearoa and more generally from Euro-American to Pacific cultures. Feu’u’s distinctive style sees him recognised as one of Aotearoa’s leading Pacific artists.
This year Feu’u has once again joined forces with the international company, Specsavers, as Patron for the Fred Hollows Foundation New Zealand. Limited edition frames (which have imagery from a painting included in his new series, Protection of the Pacific Ocean) will be available in Specsavers’ stores nationwide from November 2022. A donation from each frame that is sold, will enable someone blinded by cataracts to have sight.
Fa’asamoa is the unifying element of Feu’u’s work. The term fa’asamoa is generally defined as “the Samoan way”. The social structure of Samoan society is held together (and actively maintained) by an adherence to unwritten, but understood cultural conventions.
Nigel Brown
For more than forty years, Nigel Brown's paintings and prints have emphasised his vision of a New Zealand identity.
Brown has a systematic and workmanlike approach to painting. He works from an initial concept, which is the result of reading and extensive research. Sketches, photographs and other sources are used as a visual back up to develop specifics, leading to works on paper and trial paintings. The artist works from a gesso ground on which he applies a base coat of yellow ochre. The main ideas and words of each work are then sketched in by brush, followed by the initial lines and tones, and the first of five layers or more of paint.
Brown directly and selectively employs history, literature and politics as devices in his artworks. He also uses words in his paintings, a technique that was heavily influenced by the English poet and painter William Blake. At Elam, Colin McCahon suggested that Brown contain his text in a border or boundary, a technique he still employs today.
Brown has received numerous awards throughout his career including; the QEII Arts Council Grant (1981), Inaugural Artists to Antarctica Award (1998) and in 2004 Brown was awarded the ONZM for services to painting and printmaking. In 2009, The Brown Years, an exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery, celebrated the formative years of the artist’s career. In 2011 he was chosen to participate in The Depot’s Cultural Icons project. The project celebrated individuals who had contributed significantly to New Zealand’s creative landscape.
Brown has exhibited extensively in public and private galleries throughout New Zealand
Aroha Gossage
Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Ati Awa
Aroha Gossage’s next exhibition is due to open at ARTIS Gallery on 9th June 2020.
Gossage’s paintings seek to connect with Tupuna and the past. Her landscapes are located in Pakiri and Hauturu (Little Barrier), physically, spiritually and conceptually.
Much of the conceptual foundation of her art Gossage attributes to her mother, and to a childhood spent learning how to live with and from the land – collecting and propagating native seeds, diving for kina and paua, fishing in the river. ‘She gifted me with a childhood living closely connected to our environment in Pakiri,’ Gossage says.
Gossage incorporates kokowai (earth) into her paintings, along with oil paints. She seeks kokowai out because of its ‘gentle purity’ in handling as well as its ‘unspoken power’ visually. Gossage collects the medium herself, allowing her time on the land, thinking and exploring. “These rich earth colours you can’t buy in a tube. I know where to go to get rich reds, up by the dam. There are pure whites and blues if you dig a metre down in a special spot under our bridge. The ochres are on the corner by the gravel road up by my auntie’s place, and I find lovely greys at our waterfall‘.
The sense of light in her work results from manoeuvring oil pigment on board, to create what she calls ‘soft hazy gradients’. When the paint dries there are unprecedented beautiful effects that happen between the solvent and the pigment that give a likeness of atmosphere within her compositions. The sanding between each coat – to create a fine surface with a silky finish – can also achieve effects like the stippled sky, seen in a number of her compositions.
Andy Leleisi’uao
One of the most significant Pacific artists living and working in New Zealand today, Andy Leleisi’uao has been represented by ARTIS Gallery since February 2020. In 2021 Leleisi’uao was awarded the Senior Pacific Artist Award by Creative New Zealand.
Immigrant communities and their experiences are central to Leleisi’uao’s works. An “artist of diaspora”, (whose family migrated from one part of the world to another) his work is reflective of his experience as a New Zealand born Samoan.
Leleisi’uao often paints in series and seen together, the paintings may be viewed as an extended narrative; taken individually, each painting provides an intimate view of a world that is at once alien and very familiar. Recurring motifs throughout his works provide visual touchstones for viewers and remind us of the inherent humanity of the figures depicted and the universality of their struggle.
Andy Leleisi’uao’s work is included in the permanent New Zealand collections of Pataka Museum Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, the Chartwell Collection and the Wallace Arts Trust collection, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney and the Museum of Ethnography, Frankfurt, Germany.
Nicola Bennett
Nicola Bennett joined ARTIS Gallery in December 2023 and will be presenting her first solo exhibition at Artis during 2024.
Originally from the UK, Nicola, now based in Okere Falls, offers a unique sensory depth within her art. Her paintings celebrate the sensory intricacies of cooking with everyday ingredients - think mushrooms, tomatoes, aubergines, avocados, and apricots.
Her approach intertwines colour with flavour, intertwining the sensory experiences of cooking and painting. She harmonises colours by intuitively mixing them, often painting directly on ingredients to capture their essence. Her process is organic, allowing paintings to evolve naturally, sometimes diverging from initial expectations.
Drawing inspiration from the likes of chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, local farms and local chefs, her works are an exploration of synaesthesia - where multiple stimuli merge into one painting that becomes a sensory journey. In this way, when her kitchen and painting studio converge, it becomes a space where ingredients inspire both culinary creations and vibrant abstract paintings.
Nicola's formal training includes a BFA (Hons) from Leeds in the UK and an MFA First Class Hons from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design.
ARTIS Gallery has been operating as a dealer gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, since 1984. A contemporary gallery with a strong exhibition focus, ARTIS represents a diverse range of leading New Zealand artists, many of whom have achieved international acclaim.
ARTIS is one of New Zealand’s leading sculpture galleries and we feature important large works by our sculptors on the plinth located outside, at the front entrance to the Gallery. Situated beneath ARTIS Gallery is a large open plan stockroom and viewing space. Known as the BASEMENT Gallery, this area gives our artists the opportunity to continuously have their works on display.
