A Horse Walks Into A Bar: Humour and Portraiture in Aotearoa is curated by Liz Stringer Curatorial Intern for 2025, Matthew Whiteman.  Reaching across a half-century of portraiture in Aotearoa, this exhibition offers a potted history of how painters, photographers and video artists have snuck punchlines into the white cubes of the gallery, and to what end.

Image: Maurice Bennett, Self, 2010. 2275 pieces of toast, PVA and 2 pot lacquer on painted board. Collection of New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata

Drawing together work by contemporary artists, Reclaimed Land: Tāngata, Tiriti, Taiao presents a portrait of the earth told through personal, ancestral and collective relationships between he tāngata and te taiao. These artists take action for nature, and tell stories of collective futures. Their works reclaim the land, reminding us that to tend to the land is to tend to ourselves.

Curated by Israel Randell and Susan Ballard 

Image: Tia Ranginui, Ka Hapai te Rama, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Laree Payne Gallery.  

Hannah Ireland, a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist of Ngāti Hine and Ngāpuhi descent, paints portraits in the broadest, loosest sense, capturing the essence of faces and emotions. Her paintings feature faces that appear distorted, as if pressed against the glass plate of a photocopier. 

Curated by Jaenine Parkinson

Image: Hannah Ireland, Clock Work, 2023, watercolour and acrylic on found window

Delving into the complicated multiplicities of self-perception and identity, this exhibition presents a selection of innovative painted self-portraits by modern and contemporary artists from Aotearoa New Zealand.

Image: Sacha Lees, Sometimes an Outline Coloured In, 2020. Collection New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, winner of the Adam Portraiture Award 2020.

This exhibition will focus on three aspects of Lynch’s artistic career: portraits painted for competitions (for instance she entered the famous Australian Archibald Portrait Prize four times), controversial portraits (her portrait of Mayor Percy Dowse, Lower Hutt was taken down at the Dowse but in 1984 the director was told to reinstate it against his dislike for it) and portraits of her students, of which there are many.

Image: Julia Lynch, Self-portrait, c.1924, private collection.

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a competition that encourages young Maaori artists to create portraits of their tupuna (ancestors) in any medium. The Award is hosted and administered by Te Pūkenga Whakaata the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in honour of the late Maaori King, Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII.

In response to the Tuia 250 event, Me Anga Whakamua – Facing the Future, explores the impact of the first encounters between Māori and Europeans. Emotive photographic portraits of tāngata whenua, their thoughts and aspirations offer a window into everyday lives of Māori looking back to the past to form a pathway to a shared future. 

Image: Diane Stoppard, Papanui Polamalu, 2019, Silver gelatin print, Courtesy Hihiaua Cultural Centre

Gavin Hurley’s portraits substantiate, interfere and play with the role of portraiture as a tool for the crafting and performance of public personae.  

Image: Gavin Hurley, Standing on Moonlight, 2021, courtesy of the artist.

A picture is a whole world unto itself.

Step beyond the frame and see what you find. Background Matters asks what can be revealed when we view the sitter of a portrait in the expanded field of their surroundings. In bringing the background to the fore, this exhibition subverts the hierarchy of subject and setting to consider the portraiture of Aotearoa New Zealand from a fresh vantage point.

Image: Nicolette Page, Carmen, Oil on board, 2012. Collection New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Gift of the artist