Lisa Reihana has worked for over four decades as an artist, producer and cultural interlocutor across film, costume, text and photography. A key proponent in the development of Maori art since the 1990s, Reihana’s cinematic language counters the bias of recorded histories to re-centre non-western cultural identity, redefining how histories of colonisation are represented and remembered.

 

Reihana has exhibited widely both in museums and biennales around the world and is found in important private and museum collections in New Zealand and internationally, including Brooklyn Museum (USA), Plug In ICA (Canada), Royal Academy (UK), Quai Branly Museum (France), Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea (Italy), Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (New Zealand), and QAGOMA (Australia). 

 

In 2017, Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale with her large-scale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-17), a seminal work in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history canon, which has since been shown around the world and garnered widespread critical acclaim. 

 

Reihana’s ambitious video work, GROUNDLOOP (2022), was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the launch of the much-anticipated Sydney Modern. More recently, Reihana unveiled DigiRadiance: GOLD_LEAD_WOOD_COAL (2024), commissioned by Tai Kwun in Hong Kong, and Māramatanga, a six-metre-tall video installation and the first major digital work to be commissioned by the University of Auckland Art Collection.

 

In 2014, Reihana was awarded an Arts Laureate Award by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. She was subsequently awarded the Te Tohu Toi Ke Te Waka Toi Maori Arts Innovation Award from Creative New Zealand in 2015, and in 2018 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. 

Edward Waring is a New Zealand born, Sydney based artist whose practice centres around discussions of memory. Striving to prompt a shift in how we perceive particular objects, Waring repurposes abandoned, albeit ornamental and once treasured objects, and breathes new life into them. His work recalls the crystal pieces of his mother and her friends, reserved for special occasions, sometimes hidden, sometimes displayed, but often never used. Working with vintage crystal and glass, he creates colourful assemblages that surprise with their dynamism and playfulness. In doing so, Waring creates a tribute to the strong women who raised his generation, celebrating their secret and fabulous histories that are now, if ever, rarely narrated or acknowledged.

 

Through a complex engagement with how we employ objects and how their associated meanings shift over time, Waring creates a radical transformation of the function and appearance of crystal pieces. By bringing something from the past and placing it sharply in the contemporary world, he invites us to defy our expectations of existing things, but also people, and encourages us to seek out the hidden beauty and excitement in what we now consider mundane or prosaic. Waring’s work can be found in important private collections both nationally and internationally, as well as being presented in public collections such as The Powerhouse Museum and The Art Gallery of New South Wales. His work has been exhibited at art fairs such as Sydney Contemporary (2024) and Aotearoa Art Fair (2025). Waring has also been a finalist in prize exhibitions including Reimagine Art Prize and Woollahra Small Sculpture Art Prize. As an artist whose work understandably captures viewers’ intrigue and holds their gaze, Waring has been featured in The Press/Te Matatika, Art Monthly, and Habitas Living.