Various Artists with Sofia & Maya

Andrea Du Chatenier is a Whanganui-based artist, primarily working amongst ceramics and glass to produce these playfully complex small-scale sculptures. Her practice circulates around this idea of experimentation, an investigation of clay, surfaces, glazes, and forms — driven by a fascination of material, what it can do, and how it will react. Seeking and giving into all of its spontaneity and unpredictability. Allowing the slumping, cracking and shifting of material to not only be allowed within the work, but to let its unpredictability guide the work. 

Her upcoming show at Anna Miles Gallery, Everything Falls presents a new body of dazzling sculptures, that both draw from her past works and previous pathways of experimentation, while also delving head first into a new kind of experimentation. Firing ceramic and glass together, two different materials that behave in completely different manners when placed in the kiln. 

But with this unpredictability comes spontaneous moments of success. A meeting of forms, textures, and colours that lead the viewer into a theatrical landscape of experimentation. 

Maya caught up with Andrea ahead of her show opening at Anna Miles Gallery.

August Ward is an artist who grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau, whose primarily painting practice explores the visual signature and emblems of affluence and desire, consumption and the idealised female form – existing in the uncanny valley of womanhood, letting the contrast and intersection of imperfection and glamour lead the work both practically and conceptually. 

Her current solo exhibition at Ivan Anthony, World of Interiors, sees Ward furthering her exploration in this realm of subject matter, expanding her painting and drawing practice in scale and form, bringing these sculptural qualities into the works and space surrounding. Crystals adorning the canvas to form a necklace, ledges attached at the base of others with taxidermied mice, and a cavity for a Miss Dior perfume to perch, these symbols become physical adornments to the glamour of their pictorial counterparts. Pushing and pulling each painting’s textural potential, the idea of the surface sits at the forefront of her relationship with oil paint and graphite as her primary mediums. 

Sof caught up with August about World of Interiors ahead of its opening tonight.

The McCahon House Trust was established in 1999, to recognise the life and art of Colin McCahon during the transformative period where the family lived in Titirangi. The McCahon House Trust upholds this by offering the Parehuia Artist Residency, where artists are offered a place to live on site, as well as an artist studio to work out of. 

This is a wonderful programme that has been designed to support Artists at these pivotal moments in their career. The residency providing time, space, and support for artists to really hone into the development of their practice. 

Helping in supporting this great program to stay thriving The McCahon House Trust has recently announced a nationwide raffle of one Judy Millar's Major works, Hard Epic. The initiative drawing on the historic Art Union tradition, as well as marking the twentieth anniversary of the Parehuia Artist residency. The raffle Inviting the wider public to help participate in the sustaining of this wonderful art program.  

Judy Millar is one of Aotearoa’s most distinguished and internationally acclaimed artists, producing breathtaking large-scale abstract paintings. Millar holds a close place in her heart for the Parehuia artist residency, as she was the very first artist to be invited to live and work on site. Her time there came at a pivotal time in her artistic career, and provided her time to focus on her practice. 

Millar now serves as a trustee of the McCahon house and is passionate about giving back to the next generation of artists here in Aotearoa.

Maya caught up with Judy about the raffle, and the importance of the Parehuia Artist Residency.

Grace Aotearoa is a Tāmaki-based gallery, which specialises in the representation of early career artists within Aotearoa. Directed by Emil Scheffmann, the gallery has recently relocated from its former Pitt Street home into Symond Street’s historic Rationalist House. A building rich with history, Rationalist House has been owned by the New Zealand Association of Rationalists & Humanists since 1960 – having been home to the Association’s library, an infamous jazz club, the Society for Closer Relations with the USSR, and, for many years, the Socialist Party. As a gallery with a reputation for championing younger emerging artists, it feels apt that Grace now sits between AUT, Whitecliffe, and Elam, at the heart of fine arts education in Tāmaki. 

Sof caught up with gallery director Emil Scheffmann about the move, as well as their current joint exhibition showing Atarangi Anderson and Georgia Tikaputini Douglas Hood, Mau Āhua.