The Adam Portraiture Award is New Zealand’s premier portrait prize.

Image: David Jones, Study of Esther by the fig tree, 2024, oil on linen (Highly Commended)

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

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a biennial competition that provides emerging Māori artists with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording and celebrating tūpuna and their stories.

Image: Marie Kyle, Between Worlds, acrylic on linen (finalist)

The Adam Portraiture Award is New Zealand’s premier portrait prize.

Image: Tessa Meyer, Sunshine, oil on board (finalist)

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a biennial competition that provides emerging Māori artists with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording and celebrating tūpuna and their stories.

Image: Tia Barrett, A Time Capsule of Aroha, photography (finalist)

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a biennial competition that provides emerging Māori artists with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording and celebrating tūpuna and their stories.

Image: Mohi Toko, Aunty Lucy, photography (finalist)

The Adam Portraiture Award is New Zealand’s premier portrait prize.

Image: Duncan Pepe Long, Snake Eyes, oil paint (finalist)

This monumental series of works by Hariata Ropata-Tangahoe traces her matriarchal whakapapa (genealogy) and honours her female tūpuna (ancestors).

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a biennial competition that provides emerging Māori artists with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording and celebrating tūpuna and their stories.

Image: Ani Ligaliga, Lines of whakapapa (People’s Choice Award winner)

Image: Rita Angus in Taradale, 1987, Collection Art House Trust

Love and marriage may be universal, but their mutual inclusivity is not. What can a wedding photograph tell us about the love shared between two people? How can portraiture better inform us about the experience of being in love? 

2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the Fletcher Trust Collection, one of the most prestigious private art collections in Aotearoa

Image: Imogen Taylor (born 1985, Pākehā) Limb Report 2022

2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the Fletcher Trust Collection, one of the most prestigious private art collections in Aotearoa

Image: Robyn Kahukiwa, Aroha, 1971. Courtesy of the artist and Fletcher Trust Collection, Tāmaki Makaurau.

Ian Scott, Red Mrkusich, 2008, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 723 x 622mm, courtesy of the artist’s estate and Micheal Lett Gallery

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a biennial competition that provides emerging Māori artists with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording and celebrating tūpuna and their stories.

Image: Lines of whakapapa, Ani Ligaliga (People’s Choice Award winner)

When photographer David Cook moved into Hamilton East, he was drawn to the colorful, creative and chaotic lives of his neighbours. With camera in hand, he explored back-yard mechanics to Sunday roasts, inventing an intimate documentary of a State Housing suburb in the 90s, moments before gentrification set in.

2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the Fletcher Trust Collection, one of the most prestigious private art collections in Aotearoa

Image: Robyn Kahukiwa, Aroha, 1971. Courtesy of the artist and Fletcher Trust Collection, Tāmaki Makaurau.

The biennial Adam Portraiture Award is New Zealand’s premier portrait prize.

This is the final touring destination of the 2022 Award.

Image: Lady Day, Jessica Gurnsey (Winner of the 2022 Adam Portraiture Award)

This exhibition, the Gallery’s first single-collector exhibition, pays tribute to the significant collection amassed by curator, art historian and long-time director of New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, Avenal McKinnon.

Image: Seraphine Pick, Katherine Mansfield, 2014

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award is a competition that encourages emerging Māori artists to create portraits of their tūpuna (ancestors) in any medium. The Award was launched in August 2020 and is hosted and administered by the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata in honour of Kiingi Tuheitia.

The Kingii Tuheitia Portraiture Award provides emerging Māori artists with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording and celebrating tūpuna (ancestors) and their stories.

With 100 years separating them, photographers Edith Amituanai (b. 1980 Auckland) and George Robson Crummer (b. 1868 Auckland, d. 1953 Rarotonga) each capture moments in time from their Pacifica communities.

What emerges in the space between these two sets of portraits is a conversation about migration, colonisation, settlement, cross-cultural exchange and identity across the Pacific Ocean.

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