Arena w/ Anto Yeldezian: February 7th, 2025

Anto Yeldezian is a Tāmaki Makaurau based artist of Armenian heritage. His latest exhibition, Arena, is currently showing at Coastal Signs Gallery.

The works in Arena often play with bright and bold colours - often being mixed medium, with images, sketches and painting superimposed onto one another. Coastal Signs writes that in Anto’s paintings, ‘[. . . ] images from a myriad of sources are layered on top of one another and synthesized, very adeptly, into painterly tableau. 'The works in Arena are, as the title suggests, often organised around game boards – such as Snakes & Ladders and Noughts & Crosses – and representations of contested territories, both fictional and otherwise’.

Beth had a kōrero with Anto about Arena and his artistic process