“Since returning to Aotearoa a year ago it’s been such a pleasure to reconnect with practises that have been important to me for a longer period of time as well as getting to know the work of others better, so my selection of dreams works or experiences to have is focused here!”

1. Anoushka Akel, Wrack Lines, 2022.

This work captures the expressive potential of language in its fullest form. I love that Anoushka’s work is so steadfastly painting and engaging with that, but also that they suggest a score for choreography or music.

2. Ammon Ngakuru, Noah’s Arc, Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons, 2023.

This arc is an exquisite invitation to invest in solidarity. Given the world we are currently asked to live in, this work resonates so deeply with the proposition of the otherwise that so many artists are committed to.

3. HOEA! Gallery, Gisborne.

Led by Melanie Tangere Baldwin and Michelle Kerr this gallery runs an amazing programme for, from and with the community in which it is located. I’ve loved observing the textural and exacting challenges to standard exhibition design that they are doing and would love to see them do a take-over in a large municipal gallery or museum.

4. Joanna Margaret Paul, Unwrapping the body, 1977.

I grew up with two small drawings by Paul that she gifted my mother to thank her for the care mum provided to one of her sons, so have always felt close to the way her work describes and unfolds into the tenuous complexity of having a mother, being a mother, having a body. I’d never seen this work before encountering it in the City Gallery Wellington when I was visiting to spend time with my mum who was at the edge of life at the time. It captures a lot of the friction of the somatic.

5. Rewe Thompson, The realisation of his design for Ngāti Poneke Design in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.

Coming to live here with my husband who is an architect has been really interesting. He comes from a very specific post-wall Berlin context so spending more time on what is specific here, what are the challenges the opportunities have made for good conversation. We both agree that realising this piece of design would be incredible, his approach is so exciting in what it complicates in Global North ideas of Post Modernism AND concepts of Māori architecture.