Matthew Galloway

Born in Christchurch, Matthew Galloway now lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. He is a current doctoral candidate at Elam School of Fine Arts, and holds an MFA from Ilam School of Fine Arts (2012).  He has shown widely at many leading contemporary art institutions around Aotearoa. His work has been included in a number of significant international exhibitions in Latin America and Europe. 

Galloway presents a mode of art making that can be best described as documentarian and historiographic. Working both within and beyond of the confines of the gallery, his work is broadly interdisciplinary, and strongly informed by his background in design. Past works include sculpture, installation, film, wall drawings, image and text, artist books and publishing.

Whilst in residence at Parehuia, Matthew intends to dedicate time to develop new threads of two ongoing projects and create a new moving image work. The residency will afford him access to specific research material and manufacturing techniques only available in Tāmaki Makaurau — specifically for producing digital tapestry works related to his data sovereignty research.

Rowan Panther

Rowan Panther lives and works in Kaitaia. She completed a Diploma in Contemporary Photography from Unitec in 2002 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam in 2008. She has exhibited in Aotearoa, Australia, the UK and Europe. Her work is held in the collections of Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Pātaka Art + Museum and the British Museum. In 2021, Panther was a recipient of the Blumhardt Foundation Dame Doreen’s Gift and in 2024 was selected for Schmuck.

Panther’s practice weaves together diverse European and Oceanic textile traditions, responding to the complexities of colonisation and to her mixed Irish, English, German and Samoan ancestry. The bobbin lace pieces she creates reference patterns of European collars worn by nobility and incorporate objects that draw upon Pacific cultural forms such as ceremonial breast plates.

Rowan’s time at Parehuia will mark a return to Titirangi, the place in which she first learnt the craft of lace-making fifteen years ago. Being located back in Tāmaki will afford Rowan an opportunity to explore and extend on the research she is currently undertaking at Auckland Museum and engage with the collection on a deeper level.

Sefton Rani

Sefton Rani is a self-taught artist of Cook Island heritage who lives and works in Tāmaki. He has had an ongoing practice for over a decade, exhibiting and engaging with a range of galleries and public institutions across Aotearoa.

Rani's work is an investigation into Pasifika identity within the context of working class and industrial Auckland. He explores the materiality of paint, experimenting with the boundaries between painting, sculpture, carving, and heritage art through process-driven works that capture the physicality of his mark making methods and reference a history of labour and cultural production. 

Sefton's time at Parehuia will mark a transformational point in his career as an artist. After his home and studio were destroyed by cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, he was forced to adapt and develop his work in response to these changed circumstances. Displacement, both physically and spiritually, becoming a key narrative. During his residency, Rani intends to further extend these ideas into a new, unified direction and body of  work.