UPCOMING GALLERY EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
Visit the Malcolm Smith Gallery on Saturday 23 August, 10am for a conversation with three award winning artists of this years’ Estuary Art and Ecology Awards. Joining us will be Lucy Boermans (first place recipient), Rose Lee (second place recipient), and Saskia Eliane Van Dijk (third place recipient). Each artist will share insights into their work and practice, diving deeper into their relationship with the Estuary and the themes their works aim to address.
This is part one of a two part artist talk series with the Estuary Art and Ecology Awards winners. The second part will take place at UXBRIDGE on Saturday 30 August.
In Conversation with Estuary Artists: Lucy Boermans, Rose Lee & Saskia Eliane Van Dijk
Saturday 23 August, 10am
Malcolm Smith Gallery
Free entry
时雨 shí yǔ, loosely translating to ‘timely rain’, dances to the idea of the fleeting spring showers that refresh the landscape after winter. Adopted from Chinese literature and linked to the ancient philosophical belief of 天人合一 or Tiān Rén Hé Yī (understood as the unity between Heaven, Earth and Humanity), the concept of ‘timely rain’ reminds us to trust the universe to bring what is needed, when it is needed. That we must relinquish the perception of human dominance and control over the natural world to achieve harmony within it. In an age shaped by science, we tend to frame the material world as all things tangible and reject the intangible as less than or entirely unreal. Yet there remains an ongoing undercurrent of oneness that permeates throughout humanity.
时雨 Showers of Spring is an exhibition that demonstrates how this interconnectedness finds form through the artworks of Qiuwang Wang and Gavin Chai as painting and ceramics, respectively. It champions the primal instinct to live, posing the poignant question: “What is our purpose?” Vulnerability, openness and allegory are strong thematic threads through both artists’ works. Enigmatic in subject, their worlds become surreal and dreamlike with an emphasis on the human condition, revealing the inner landscapes that influence our lives.
Qiuwang Wang (born in China, 1973) is a figurative painter based in Tamaki Makaurau Auckland. Through symbolic forms and multi-layered compositions, his work explores the relationship between humanity, nature, and consciousness — feeling the resonance between spirit and nature, and sensing the unity of all things within the flow of existence and transformation. His paintings seek to reveal the invisible currents of emotion, the inner landscapes, and the dimensions that surround and shape us.
Qiuwang Wang graduated from Nanjing University of the Arts in 1996. After an early career in graphic design, he turned his full attention to art-making in 2011. Since moving to New Zealand in 2014, he has lived and worked in Auckland, where he continues to explore painting and its relationship with contemporary thought and perception.
The Estuary Art and Ecology Awards are Aotearoa’s only annual contemporary art awards with ecology at the core. Artists are invited to research and respond to the Tāmaki Estuary, explore the ecological value of this vital waterway, and encourage action against its pollution. Finalists will be exhibited in the Malcolm Smith Gallery at UXBRIDGE Arts and Culture and winning artworks will be intelligent and innovative responses to ecology in the field of contemporary art.
Click here for more information on the Estuary Art and Ecology Awards.
KEY DATES
Entries open 1 April 2026
Entries close 31 May 2026
Exhibition of Finalists 4 July – 3 October 2026
Opening function and awards announcement 4 July 2026, 4:30pm
AWARDS
First Place: $5,000
Second Place: $2,000
Third Place: $1000
Merit Awards (2): $250 + $150 Gordon Harris Art Supplies Voucher
People’s Choice: $1,000
JUDGE – HANNAH BUCKLEY
Hannah Buckley is a Professor of Ecology and Head of School of Science at Auckland University of Technology who specialises in biological variation in community ecology and understanding the processes that structure biological communities. Her current focus is on how a better understanding of biological diversity can be used to enhance the functioning of human-modified ecosystems, such as sand dunes, tussock grasslands and agricultural landscapes. She received her PhD from the University of Alberta, Canada in 2000. In 2016, whilst Associate Professor at Lincoln University, Buckley was awarded a Bullard Fellowship at Harvard University. From 2017 to 2019, she was a lead investigator in the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. Buckley has co-written many publications, including ‘Predicting Ecological Change in Tussock Grasslands of Aotearoa New Zealand’, ‘Connecting through space and time: catchment-scale distributions of bacteria in soil, stream water and sediment’, and ‘Is there gender bias in reviewer selection and publication success rates for the New Zealand Journal of Ecology?’
SPONSORS
The 19th Estuary Art and Ecology Awards are generously funded by Auckland Council’s Howick Local Board, Tāmaki Estuary Environmental Forum (TEEF), the Rice Family Partnership, and Gordon Harris Art Supplies.
Sahana Rahman is a Painter, Textile and Community Artist of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan Tamil heritage. Born and raised in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, she graduated with a BFA (Hons) degree from Massey University in 2022 and moved to Tāmaki Makaurau in 2023 to pursue her arts practice full-time.
Sahana’s work reflects on the complexities of life as a brown queer person, connected with memory, healing and decolonisation through their unique blending of South Asian style embroidery and Mughal miniature painting. She layers textures with mirrors, brass charms and an earthy colour palette to reflect her diasporic identity.
In 2022, Sahana founded the “Nokshi Kotha Workshop” in response to her post-pandemic social anxiety. The workshop gently encourages connection through “Nokshi Kantha”, a fading Bengali embroidery tradition that Sahana is hoping to revive. Over 200 participants have contributed to the embroidered mural, creating space for shared conversation, collective healing and joy.
Sahana is Satellites Asian Artists Fund Visual Artist in Residence for 2025-26. This residency is presented in partnership with Te Tuhi.
More details to come.
Image courtesy of the artist.
Please note the gallery will be closed for the Christmas/New Year break.
Olivia Asher (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, b. 1994) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work explores the relationship between form and feeling, where image, material, and language intersect as traces of lived experience. Engaging with vulnerability, intimacy, and shifting human connections, Olivia moves intuitively through her written and visual practice, exploring the dialogue between self and material—where memory clings like residue and moments of becoming quietly unfold. She holds a BFA from Te Waka Tūhura Elam School of Fine Arts.
More details to come.
A celebration of the birdlife of the Tāmaki Estuary.
From an early age Tony has had a passion for art. When in his early teens his work was appreciated and purchased by local art lovers. He was a member of the Howick Art Group at 15 years of age.
Tony is a self-taught artist, early influences were Raymond Ching, Robert Bateman, and Andrew Wyeth. A trip to Wyoming in early 2000 to attend a Robert Bateman seminar fueled a desire to start a local art school and share what has been learned over 30years of painting.
Starting with classes run at the Uxbridge Centre in Howick, Tony soon established his own art school which has been running successfully ever since.
Returning to America in 2001 Tony was accepted by a prominent gallery in Jackson Hole Wyoming, the Wilcox Gallery who currently represent him in the USA.
More details to come.
Our gallery is currently not showing any exhibitions – check out our upcoming exhibitions for more information on what’s up next.
Join emerging artist, Estelle Ruijne, and Visual Arts Coordinator, Zoë May, for an afternoon of conversation on Estelle’s poetry. We’ll be exploring themes also found in her debut exhibition, Metamorphōsis, Estelle will also walk us through poems and concepts that inspired her while creating this body of work.
Estelle’s poetry is readily available to read alongside her exhibition at UXBRIDGE or you can click here to read Estelle’s poetry in your own time.
This event is free and open to everyone, we only ask that you RSVP with your name to [email protected] so we can ensure there are enough resources.
About the exhibition
Metamorphōsis is a collection of paintings that explore the confusion, discomfort and uncertainty that often comes with growing up.
Her figures peel at their skin, their spines sprout wings, or they slowly emerge from unravelling cocoons, all shedding layers that reveal something entirely new has grown beneath the surface. In each of them, a metamorphosis has taken place. The unwitting characters in Ovid’s Metamorphosis experience dramatic transformations into plants, animals and other half-human creatures as a way of being given new life. In much the same way, Ruijne uses her art to visualise the invisible metamorphosis she and her friends have been undergoing.
Despite their often fantastical imagery, her expressive artworks are grounded by a sense of relatability. There is a permeable tension between the fear of and hope for change, of the discomfort in the familiar and the allure of the unfamiliar. Distress and hesitancy battle to overcome the yearning for something more that shines through the overarching turmoil. It is this feeling of pressure, of push and pull, that deeply marks the transitory period into adulthood. Metamorphōsis reminds all of us that change is inevitable, regardless of how hard we fight it.
About the artist
Estelle Ruijne is an artist and poet who explores the transformative and fluid nature of the human experience. Currently a student at Howick College, she plans to pursue a Bachelor of Visual Art double majoring in Painting, Printmaking and Drawing, and Communication Design at AUT after completing her secondary studies. Estelle is committed to adapting and evolving these concepts through further exhibitions. Metamorphōsis is her debut exhibition.
