This exhibition brings together, for the first time, a selection of key photographic works made during and after Dr Fiona Pardington’s time residing on Waiheke Island. It includes her iconic bird, still life and hei tiki series. Pardington uses both the camera and exhibition to reveal and make public that which is often hidden or unseen.

Wonderbird invites the viewer to experience the world of our immediate experience, as it is prior to our thoughts about it; the world in its enigmatic multiplicity and open-endedness. We witness life and metamorphosis in progress—an emotional and imaginative migration toward freedom, unboundedness, and sky.

The Shape of Being and Becoming traces eleven years of sculptural practice, circling back to its origin — a mother carrying a child on her shoulders. This gesture, revisited in a new work, becomes both anchor and compass: a symbol of enduring weight, care, and transformation.

Artist in Residence 2025
Mosaics of Memory explores the relationships that connect us across the sea, considering the social tapestry of materials, bicultural and cross-generational exchange and vessel-making practices that embody deep-time transitions through threads of memory and veins of clay. During Jody Rallah's three-month residency programme, she has connected with Māori, mana whenua, artists, and creatives to respectfully consult and learn about working with materials of the whenua. Jody Rallah is a Yuggera and Biri artist from Magandjin/Brisbane with a multidisciplinary practice rooted in a deep reverence for materials, place, and intergenerational sharing.
IMAGE: Jody Rallah, Foundations– installation view Photo: Joe Ruckli

Sequence addresses the fraught relationship between continuity and rupture in the construction of moments, memories, and identities. It foregrounds the invisible boundaries that exceed visible divisions—those unseen traces where inclusion and exclusion coalesce and fracture.
Situated within these liminal thresholds—where form, interpretation, and belonging are perpetually negotiated—the work destabilises fixed notions of identity, allowing for a fluid, processual unfolding.
IMAGE: Seung Yul Oh Formation_07, 2025  
Presented in partnership with STARKWHITE

Initiated in 2007, the Waiheke Art Gallery biennial Artist in Residence programme provides selected artists with 12 weeks on Waiheke Island to develop their practice, respond to the environment, and engage with artists and the community. International and Aotearoa, New Zealand-based artists have previously been selected, including Michel Tuffery, an Australian painting group led by Euan Macleod and Wanda Gillespie.
IMAGE: Mark Surridge Sand Loop, 2018
Generously supported by Waiheke Local Board and Postage Stamp wines

The Walker & Hall Waiheke Art Award 2024 is proudly sponsored by Walker & Hall in association with the Waiheke Community Art Gallery.
This is a National Award for two dimensional works in any medium and has a Prize of $10,000 as the Premier Award.
The Zinni Douglas Merit Award for a Waiheke artist - $1000
Michael Evans Award for a figurative Work - $1000
Gordon Harris Award - $500 voucher
The Selector and judge this year is Julia Waite, Curator, New Zealand Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki