Celebrated for paintings that employ a vibrant use of colour, layered and textural surfaces, and geometric forms, Nicola Farquhar is the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Visiting Artist. Based in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Farquhar has spent time living and working in Ōtepoti Dunedin over recent months, producing a new body of work for the exhibition Stars, lands, including paintings, moving image, and a publication. The exhibition title sets up a dialogue between earth and sky and the space that exists in between. Stars, lands is concerned with this notion of space as something that exists physically and metaphorically between objects and ideas. Underpinned by the careful consideration of form, colour, materials and placement, the works create their own constellation pattern – a network of independent objects that sit in relation to one another and whose interpretation is a matter of perspective. Themes of metamorphosis and regeneration, language and storytelling, wider cosmic mysteries, geometry, planetary bodies and systems, and our relationship to the natural world are explored through paint, moving image and the written word. Stars, lands explores and celebrates the mechanics of shapes – as points of intersection and connection.

A Dunedin Public Art Gallery Visiting Artist Programme, supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. Project Partner, Dunedin School of Art.