Entry is free.
The Gallery is open daily 10.30am - 4.30pm.
Exhibitions in our two gallery spaces change three or four times a year and feature artworks on loan and from our collection.
Star Gossage’s paintings show people as interconnected; inseparable from wairua (spirit), whenua (land), whakapapa (ancestry) or whanuau (family).
Image: Star Gossage, Pa Girls, 2013, oil on board, Private collection, Auckland
This exhibition asks: how are portraits utilised as tools of state and institutional power? and, how can portraiture be used in ways that undermine or subvert systems of power?
Image: Liz Maw, Elizabeth, 1999, Oil on board, Private collection
This collection of works by the eminent painter and war artist Peter McIntyre (1910 - 1995) and his daughter, photographer Sara McIntyre provides an engaging portrait of the small central north island village of Kākahi through a unique pairing of their works.
This exhibition celebrates the ongoing relevance and standing of the Alexander Turnbull Library, 100 years after it first opened.
Image: Gottfried Lindauer, Mrs. Ngahui Rangitakaiwaho of Wairarapa, Dec 21st 180 (ATL ref.G- 515) courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
Marti Friedlander (1928-2016) is one of our most prominent and highly regarded photographers. This exhibition will show and explore the range and diversity of Marti’s portraits, including many that have never been shown publicly before.
Image: Marti Friedlander Self-portrait 1964
Mostly known and admired for his renditions of the Canterbury landscape, Bill Sutton also attained an outstanding reputation as a portraitist during his lifetime.
Image: Bill Sutton, Unknown Man, 1948, oil on canvas, Collection: New Zealand Portrait Gallery
New Zealand’s premier portrait prize returns in 2020.
Image: Sacha Lees Sometimes an outline coloured in 2019, Winner Adam Portraiture Award 2020
Works that defy the conventions of traditional portraiture and explore ways of communicating diverse identities through portraiture.
Curated by Georgie Keyse
Image: Frances Hodgkins, Still life: Self-portrait c.1935, oil on panel, collection of the Museum of Te Papa Tongarewa
Image: Appo Hocton, the first Chinese New Zealander, 1876. Nelson Provincial Museum, WE Brown Collection.
Poutokomanawa features portraits and stories of the transgender women of Carmen’s generation including Chrissy Witoko, Georgina Beyer and Dana de Milo, celebrating their role as poutokomanawa for the community.
Image: Nicolette Page, Carmen 2012, oil on canvas, collection of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata. Gift of the Artist. Photograph: Jess O’Brien
Co-curated by Chanel Hati, Talei Langley and Georgie Keyse
Jaqueline Fahey’s Suburbanites presents people from Fahey’s life within familial, domestic and neighbourhood entanglements.
Image: Jacqueline Fahey, Drinking Couple: Fraser Analyses My Words 1978. Oil on board, The University of Auckland Collection.
Margaret Tolland is an artist and illustrator who is Samuel Marsden’s Artist In Residence for 2019. The residency takes us into the rich and intermingling world of science and art and also connects with Wellington’s very own Zealandia.
With an eye on the rich details that Aotearoa has to offer, Margaret Tolland has illustrated eight paintings through the lens of some environmental champions. The idea of a portrait has extended itself to represent a conservation view with the interests, projects, and species that each person is dedicated to working with.
Our endemic species have many challenges facing them and these role models for conservation are experienced, dedicated, hard working and extremely knowledgeable. The length and breadth of the commitment to Zealandia and wider environmental projects in Aotearoa is breathtaking. There is a lot to learn from those represented in this exhibition.
My Life To Live tells the story and celebrates the immense contribution of refugee background workers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It also tells the stories of some of the challenges of life in their new home. ChangeMakers Resettlement Forum and Living Wage Movement Aotearoa NZ have worked together in partnership to tell those stories.
The exhibition is a celebration of the lives of refugee background workers. It tells the stories of the immense contribution of refugee background workers to their new home country, Aotearoa. It tells of their hopes and dreams. It also tells of their struggles in low wage work and the difference the Living Wage makes in the lives of workers and their families.
The photographer is an Iranian PHD student, Ehsan Hazaveh. The stories have been recorded in interviews conducted by Victoria University of Wellington Senior Lecturer in History, Dr Cybèle Locke and the narratives have been crafted by Wellington writer, Elizabeth Knox.
Image: Peter James Quinn: "At the East St corner, Kirra Lee begins a Saturday night shift on Karangahape Road, Auckland.”
This collection of homegrown examples shows some of the various creative and stylistic techniques employed by New Zealand portrait artists.
Image: Rudolf Boelee, Robyn Hyde (2007), acrylic on hessian board. NZPG collection.
Best known for his sublime, ethereal landscapes with dense narratives, A Portrait of Ūawa Tolaga Bay He Whakaahua o Ūawa is a major survey of Walsh's portrait paintings.
This exhibition tracks a century of artistic renderings and re-imagining of one of New Zealand's greatest writers.
This exhibition celebrates the life and art of expatriate New Zealand artist Douglas MacDiarmid.
Image: Douglas MacDiarmid, Self Portrait on wet paving stones, 2010-13, Acrylic on paper, Private collection, Wellington
Julia Holden’s art practice breaches perceptions of what painting and portraiture can be. This exhibition brings together a selection of works produced over the last seven years to illustrate the various ways Holden has pushed boundaries; combining painting with performance, photography and animated film.
Wayne Youle’s bold, compelling portraits of New Zealand art-world personalities include musicians, poets, writers and visual artists including Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, Margaret Mahy and Len Lye. The vibrant, multi-coloured portraits with their abstract shapes and monochrome backgrounds are deceptively simple – yet remarkably alive.
Like many artists of his generation, Youle looks to Pop Art for inspiration with bright saturated colours, hard-edged style and appropriated imagery. He takes the portrait and reinvents it, demonstrating how portraiture can assert itself as a viable and relevant art form today.
Come take a ‘portrait tour of the arts’ through the paintings of New Zealand’s best known figures in the creative arts.
Situated Selves shows how the once popular studio portrait was eclipsed in popularity by an informal, documentary style from the 1960s onwards.
image: Brian Brake, 'Doreen Blumhardt' 1980
The biennial Adam Portraiture Award is New Zealand’s premier portrait prize.
Image: Winner Logan Moffat with Elam
Spanning 50 years of Hodgkins’ life, this exhibition is curated by art historian and 19th century specialist in women artists Dr Pamela Gerrish Nunn.
A multimedia exhibition showing portraits of creative women and their work.
Curators: Peter Derksen and Nicola Caldwell
Eye contact is often fleeting – we look away from our most familiar friends, share only passing glances with strangers on the street. But if you were to really gaze into someone’s eyes, how would this change your perception of them?
Direct and uncompromising, the portraits in Eye to Eye explore the dynamics of looking shared between artist and subject, subject and viewer.
A Deane Gallery exhibition featuring works from the NZPG collection.
Curators: Nicola Caldwell & Peter Derksen
Covering over 300 years of cartoon portraiture, this exhibition presents original caricature art in a wide range of styles from traditional paintings and drawings to contemporary digital media, and shows how modern caricature has evolved from the print media into a predominantly digital art form.
Classic caricatures by world-famous New Zealand cartoonists including Sir David Low, Les Gibbard and Murray Ball are included, as well as tongue-in-cheek portraits of New Zealand celebrities by talented contemporary caricaturists like Sharon Murdoch and Chris Slane.
The exhibition is curated by Dr Oliver Stead, Curator of Drawings, Paintings and Prints at the Turnbull Library, and Hannah Benbow, the Turnbull’s Research Librarian, Cartoons. Ludicrous Likenesses also celebrates the 25th anniversary of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive at the Turnbull Library
The portraits in Feeling Blue feature blue in its expansive variety. Blue collars and blue scarves, blue skies and blue seas, a blue nose from the chill, the steely gaze of a career defining blue, blue blood wrapped in a cobalt dress, a diamond’s icy facets, blue armchairs and blue walls, the blue mood of missing a husband at sea, music — painstakingly, heart wrenchingly blue.
This exhibition brings together paintings from the New Zealand Portrait Gallery’s collection united by their blue consciousness. Blue can, as in the case of Elizabeth McPhee, serve to place one’s head in the clouds; or, as for Kayte, it can be all encompassing: a life lived in pursuit of the blues. The Blue Girl goes about her chores with the subdued blue tones of a Sunday afternoon; whereas Peter Hawes dons a blue that packs a punch. Blue may connect, or it may divide, but it is always, uniquely, at once colour and condition.
Feeling Blue is a selection of works from the New Zealand Portrait Gallery's permanent collection in the Deane Gallery. The Deane Gallery is generously supported by Sir Roderick and Gillian Lady Deane.
Curated by Hanahiva Rose
A selection of artworks acquired by the New Zealand Portrait Gallery are on display in the Deane Gallery. From Shannon Novak's abstract portrait of Michael Smither to an intimate portrait by Trevor Moffitt of his wife's friend and carer.
This is a small selection of the Portrait Gallery’s new portrait acquisitions from 2016. The Gallery acquires work through various means, primarily gifted or sponsored portraits. We are always looking to expand our collection of portraits. A gift of a portrait to the New Zealand Portrait Gallery helps to build a representative collection of portraits of people who have contributed to the development of our nation, or who embody our culture in some interesting or important respect.
A photograph captures a split second in time and records it for history. Whether colour or black and white, digital or film, it is a moment which can’t be repeated or replicated. Capture exhibits those precious one off moments. The photographs range from those of historic record, like the wedding photograph of Richard Kelly, who along with his new wife Julie, would have had to stand still for up to fifteen minutes to insure correct exposure of the glass plate, to the image of Davina Whitehouse who, photographer Neil Penman was given a very brief time frame to get just four shots of the aging actress.
Images of Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon and Irene Ferguson all capture the slight unease and uncomfortableness each artist has with being posed in front of the camera, Ferguson preferring to look away completely. These images are in stark contrast to Sister Loyola Galvin and writer Catherine Chidgey who appear relaxed and confident, enjoying the process of the portrait.
Peter and Olivia McLeavey, captures the father daughter team upstairs at his gallery at a period of change with Peter beginning to step back from managing the Peter McLeavey Gallery. Olivia’s hand is placed reassuringly on Peter’s arm, indicating her lasting support.
This exhibition was made possible with the support of the Deane Endowment Trust, which supports the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Collection
The portraits in this exhibition were all created by the Christchurch-based artists known as The Group, in the middle decades of last century.
Image: Caroline Oliver, 1940, Leo Bensemann, Private Collection
