Exhibitions
Events
Our Artists in Residence Programme is an exciting opportunity for artists to spend 12 weeks living and creating on Waiheke Island.
At the end of their stay our artist in residence showcase their works in an exhibition at the Waiheke Community Art Gallery.
Made possible by our Artist in Residence Patrons, our programme is a wonderful way to find and support artists from New Zealand and overseas.
Patron Benefits include the opportunity to preview the Artist in Residence exhibition and pre-purchase works, priority bookings for Artist in Residence workshops and invitations to residency events, including a private ‘Meet the Artist’ event. Your support will be acknowledged in the exhibition catalogue and on the honours board in the Gallery.
For more information and to become a patron visit our Patrons page or download our AIR Support form.
Acclaimed New Zealand artist Wanda Gillespie starts her residency as the 2023 Waiheke Community Art Gallery Artist in Residence.
New Zealand artist Wanda Gillespie is the ninth Waiheke Community Art Gallery Artist in Residence. Gillespie will spend twelve weeks on Waiheke working on her art practice. An Australian/New Zealand award-winning contemporary artist, Gillespie works primarily with wood to produce fine sculptural works.
Wanda Gillespie has a Master of Fine Arts by Research with First Class Honours, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Intermedia), Elam School of Fine Art, The University of Auckland. She has exhibited widely, and her work is held in a number of public and private collections.
Gillespie is already known on the island having exhibited her abacus work titled A Counting Frame for Circular Economies in Perpetual Guardian Sculpture in the Gulf 2022.
Monday 1 May Residency begins
Saturday & Sunday 19-20 August Artist Workshop
Sunday 27 August, 4.00pm Artist Talk
Friday 1 September– Sunday 23 October 2023 AiR 2023 Exhibition
View her exhibition online HERE
While in New Zealand as Waiheke Community Art Gallery’s artist in residence Western Australian artist Bronwen Newbury was announced overall winner of the Cossack Art Award, Western Australia’s richest art prize.
Newbury who comes from Albany (Western Australia), won the award for her work The Golden Hour a landscape painting of the Pilbara region.
Cossack Art Award Judge John Teschendorff said “Newbury’s work, The Golden Hour, is a brilliant Australian landscape in the stylistic reality of renowned Australian artists Arthur Boyd and Fred Williams." "The work has the same high horizon and a gentle authority over the landscape. Every time you look at the painting you see something different and that’s the story of this landscape.”
“We are very thrilled that Bronwen achieved this award while on her residency on Waiheke” said Gallery Director Linda Chalmers.
“It’s been a challenging journey for Bronwen to get here and take up the residency 12 months later than scheduled, given last year’s lockdowns, and then for her to adapt to a totally different look of the land. In place of a flat landscape with high horizons, she has found steep hills and sub-tropical shapes and colours.
Mark is a highly regarded contemporary abstract painter from St. Ives, Cornwall and London and his work is held in private collections in the UK, Europe and the USA.
His event schedule included a delicious ‘Kiwi with a dash of Cornwall’ Residency Long Lunch at Batch Winery on Sunday 24 June. A well-attended Residency Talk on Saturday 7 July, and a booked out weekend workshop in the Owhanake Barn. He welcomed visitors at Open Studios on Friday afternoons during the residency and managed to thoroughly explore the island creating works for his exhibition ‘The Shape of the Walk’.
Michel is an Aotearoa New Zealand based artist of Samoan, Rarotongan and Tahitian heritage. His residency exhibition drew on the history of the Pacific and connections between Tahiti, the Cook Islands and pre-colonial Aotearoa. Traditional motifs and materials, combined with contemporary references, thread throughout his art. His show of paintings, prints and bronze sculpture works all pointed to the history of Waiheke Island.
Euan MacLeod, Steve Lopes, Elisabeth Cummings, Susan O’Doherty, Peter O’Doherty, Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa), Joe Frost, Amanda Penrose Hart and Idris Murphy. These artists have often worked together, painting and working directly from the landscape. On Waiheke, they looked to experience the landscape and its community and allow the locals to see their environment in a slightly different light.
Susanne, a painter from Wellington was taken by the sheer abundance of wonderful diverse sculptures on Waiheke, both public and privately installed. In her works she directly refers to and pictorially incorporates these sculptures. She has played with scale and space, drawing the eye over the surface of the work in what is drawn or left untouched, creating tensions between opposites.
Sarah, our third artist in residence focused on her love of landscape and still life using her skills as a gilder, glass painter and potter. She worked largely in the field to create studies and paintings expressing the elements weaving our landscape and community together. She also used her gilding skills to create a map of Waiheke called ‘Gilded Isle’ representing the island as a treasure, a golden place.
South Islander, Stephen came from Dunedin and described himself as ’artist archaeologist’ who excavates the past and relocates it in the present. He researched the history of Waiheke and the Hauraki Gulf, inspired by the book Hauraki Contested 1769-1875 by Paul Monin. Using antique found objects such as axe handles, bush saws and scythes he then beautifully crafted new identities for them using No.8 wire.
Our inaugural Artist in Residence, Phil hailed from Invercargill. During his time here he created dramatic glass wall panels and free standing glass sculptures, including smaller domestic scale bowls and platters using a technique called slump fused glass.
The centrepiece for his gallery exhibition was his ’Gates O’ Waiheke’ created during the residency as a metaphor for his reluctance to leave the island.
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