Bill Hammond: Serenading Imagined Worlds w/ AD Schierning: 23rd January, 2026

Bill Hammond: Serenading Imagined Worlds is a survey exhibition currently on view at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery. 

Hammond (b. 1947) was a Lyttleton-based artist with a career spanning over four decades, and is widely recognised as one of the most influential and original painters in Aotearoa. 

Although best known for his bird-human hybrid paintings, which largely defined his practice from the 1990s onwards, Serenading Imagined Worlds surveys and traces the preceding chapters of his practice, inviting the viewer to engage with a panoramic sweep of his career. From his handcrafted wooden works, prints, to his edgier paintings of the 1980s exploring popular culture, music, and politics, and the otherworldliness of his Auckland Islands inspired works, the show reveals the essence of who Hammond was – an artist who experimented, challenged, and was attuned to the possibility of reinvention. 

Sof had a kōrero with AD Schierning about Hammond and Serenading Imagined Worlds.