Artists

Simon and Sarah create distinctive art pieces from New Zealand wood and beeswax. After 21 years of beekeeping and years honing their individual skills turning wood and wax into art, they started collaborating together on sculptural pieces, usually using wood and coloured beeswax. Living on a bend of the Wairua River in Tai Tokerau, they are fascinated in and gain inspiration from the shapes and designs that surround them. They work with nature, pouring their aroha, experience and skills into designing beautiful, distinctive, elegant artistic and sculptural pieces. Ki te Atua te kororia katoa.

Mike Paora (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is passionate about upcycling and sustainability and dedicates his craft to breathing new life into donated and salvaged timbers, with a special focus on native timbers that would otherwise end up in landfill. As a seasoned carpenter, Mike embraces the challenge of working with these unique timbers, many of which are no longer readily available. With meticulous care, he invests time in tasks like de-nailing and removing paint or varnish, aiming to restore and highlight the inherent beauty within each piece of timber. Drawing inspiration from his culture, nature, and architecture, he skilfully transforms these timbers into stunning creations that showcase their individual charm and characteristics. What sets Mike’s work apart is his resourcefulness. Each piece he creates is influenced by the timbers he has recently acquired, allowing him to maximise their potential and minimise waste. Even offcuts from previous projects find purpose in new designs, embodying his unwavering commitment to sustainability throughout his artistic journey. Mike Paora is of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Tūwharetoa descent and resides in Whangārei.

Wellington-based artist Stacey Fraser-Allen creates vibrant, playful, and nostalgic works inspired by New Zealand’s culture and architecture. Her art celebrates the memories tied to homes, places, and communities — the spaces that shape who we are. Alongside her well-loved illustrations, she creates acrylic sculptures that bring her drawings to life in a new way. These layered sculptures play with light and shadow, their reflections casting drawings onto the wall behind and inviting viewers to experience her stories from a fresh perspective. Stacey also takes on bespoke commissions and commercial collaborations, working with clients to turn their meaningful spaces and memories into lasting works of art.

Studio Reset’s artwork is a result of combining 3 passions/professions together to create a full circle in her creative processes: beekeeping, photography, and encaustic painting. She starts with a found substrate, usually an old tray or wooden platter to create nature inspired compositions with depth, translucency and environmental meaning. She assembles her imagery by layering portions of transferred photographs with ink, pigment, and building up the layers between many fine sheets of beeswax. The process is very much an organic one; supporting sustainability in her art practice by the material she uses. Working with heat guns, blow torches and molten wax is not for the faint hearted. She is attracted to this medium for its dimensional quality and luminous colour. It also keeps her close to nature.This ancient technique from Egypt dates back to 100-300AD, used to make Fayum mummy portraits. The Encaustic medium encourages experimentation and playfulness, for its capacity to be layered and scraped back.

Grace Wilson is an Auckland based abstract artist and the creative force behind Sunday Grace. Working primarily with textured mediums and layered neutral palettes, she creates contemporary artworks that explore light, stillness, movement, and emotional connection through organic form and depth. Her work is designed to bring a sense of calm, warmth, and grounding into contemporary interiors through sculptural texture and timeless, understated palettes. Alongside her creative practice, Grace has a professional background in paediatric healthcare, a role that has shaped her understanding of human resilience, emotion, and connection.

Susan works from her studio in Waipu , Northland. Her recent works celebrate a fluid landscape occupied by a small but significant life force. Susan works with mixed media to bring shimmer, light and changing perspective to the scene . She enjoys collage. Susan has had several solo exhibitions ,displayed work in group shows , and enjoys commissions.

Susan’s approach is a vibrant one, where colour serves as an essential element in expressing the energy within her artworks. When working on paper, Susan pushes the boundaries of fluid paint tolerance, resulting in an explosion of vivid colours, intricate patterns, and captivating shapes. Susan’s artistic style has evolved to encompass various mediums and genres. Drawing inspiration from a stormy sky, the world of fashion, and the mesmerising beauty of autumn landscapes, Susan is based in the vibrant Wellington region and has had the privilege of being represented in numerous galleries and events across New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore.

Bold and primal, SWEATS creates expressive work that’s rooted in feeling over formula. His pieces begin in abstraction—colour, rhythm, and motion—before faces, figures, and features like eyes, lips, and teeth emerge. The process is instinctive, driven by emotion and energy, aiming to strike the senses first and let meaning follow. At times, the effect edges into synaesthesia—where colour feels like sound and texture carries mood—inviting viewers to connect with the layered, unfiltered experience of being human in their own way. What comes through is a mix of off-beat energy, unusual details, and pure experimentation. Collisions and impulsive imperfections come together to form faces that don’t quite conform but feel raw, alive, and full of character. There’s beauty in the unrefined—a kind of truth that’s as much about what’s left open as what’s intentional. Working across studio, street, and screen, SWEATS plays with high-contrast colour, gestural mark-making, sharp stencils, and fractured typography to keep things pulsing and untamed. Music is a constant driver, shaping the rhythm and movement of each piece and bringing physicality into the process. Textures echo the grit of photocopiers, faxes, and lo-fi print culture, with a playful undercurrent that keeps it all loose and energetic. With a background in painting, illustration, and design, SWEATS works across a variety of media—from fine art and murals to print, sculpture, and collectables. Over the past two decades, he’s shaped a creative life across Aotearoa, Australia, the UK, and Asia. Now based in Grey Lynn, Tāmaki Makaurau, he works from a shared studio and co-runs Eyes On Fire Gallery—an artist-led space centred on collaboration, community, and making things happen.

Teimah has been carving for the last 7 years learing under his father Joe Kemp. He has work in Kura Gallery (Wellington, Auckland, Taupo) and the 4Artsake gallery in Ohope, as well as the Kemp home gallery in Lake Rotoma.

At the heart of Tessa’s work is the dynamic interaction of sliced panels in her approach to composition. Using her “paint, slice and re-create” technique, she paints full panels, slices them into segments, and then rearranges them, revealing fresh perspectives and unexpected depth. Her aptly named “slat painting” style, inspired by nature, her bush surroundings, and the places she visits, blends abstraction with harmony. Each piece invites viewers to experience familiar forms in new and engaging ways.

Tim is a New Zealand-based, internationally represented artist exploring the interplay between geometric design and figurative form, inviting viewers to experience the fuzzy boundaries between abstraction and representation. Described as a modern synthesis of Op Art (optical), Pop Art, geometric abstraction, and new media art, Tim's work fuses traditional techniques with modern-day fabrication processes. His multidisciplinary practice includes paintings, lightworks, weavings, digital, and immersive art. Tim has enjoyed success in New Zealand and abroad, participating in group shows, fairs, solo exhibitions, collaborations, and residencies in a number of destinations including Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Los Angeles. He works out of his own studio and gallery in central Wellington, New Zealand.

Artist, sculptor, and designer based in Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand. Trish is established as an artist for contemporary outdoor metal sculpture and has been consistently exhibiting sculpture in indoor and outdoor exhibitions throughout NZ. Much of her work revolves around traditional gender roles and also environmental concerns. Trish has works in public and private collections including Whangarei District Council, The Whangarei Outdoor Sculpture Trail, Camera Obscura Whangarei, The Arts Trust and The Kings College Collection.

Tyla Bow is a New Zealand–based multidisciplinary artist specialising in sculpture and photography. She holds a Fine Arts degree from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, along with diplomas in Marine Biology and Scuba Instruction. An avid diving instructor, Tyla teaches others how to explore and sustainably interact with New Zealand’s marine ecosystems. Guided by her passions, her work is shaped by ongoing learning, discovery, and curiosity. Her practice explores the fragility and dynamic nature of the environment, creating one-of-a-kind pieces that embrace materiality, using recycled materials in her processes of transformation.

Based in her Hamilton studio, Finnish ceramic artist Wilhelmiina Drummond crafts sculptures that inhabit the space between the ethereal and the whimsical. Since 2016, her practice has centred on Raku, an ancient Japanese firing technique defined by its volatile nature and striking, temperamental finishes. For Wilhelmiina, the peril of the process is a vital collaborator; it adds a raw, elemental depth to her explorations of cultural myths and histories while providing a grounding contrast to her more playful, light-hearted forms.

Xavier Hart is an award-winning Auckland-based contemporary artist working between painting and sculpture. He builds textured, layered surfaces that blur the line between two and three dimensions, using colour to create immersive, emotive works. His practice explores movement and materiality, with each piece shaped through a process of carving, layering, and refining to reveal depth and energy within the surface. Inspired by his travels, his titles reference landscapes, cultures, and lived experiences that subtly guide interpretation while leaving space for the viewer’s own response.

Zoey Singh is a self-taught contemporary artist and architectural designer from Auckland, New Zealand, with Samoan, Mongolian, and Fijian-Indian heritage. Raised in a culturally diverse household, she found clarity and self-expression through art. Inspired by her ancestry, modern cubism, and artists such as Picasso, Kahlo, Van Gogh, and Basquiat, her work blends abstract and contemporary forms. Music deeply influences her creative process, reflected in her artist moniker “Feel the Vibe.” Drawing from vivid dreams and recurring eye motifs, Zoey’s symbolic, emotive artworks explore identity, emotion, and human connection.