“The images in Bill Henson’s cinematic new book The Liquid Night, derive from work the highly acclaimed artist shot on 35mm colour negative film in New York City in 1989. They present a kaleidoscopic, nocturnal journey through the frenetic, neon-lit streets of a long-lost America.”

– Peter Craven

Contact Starkwhite to secure your copy, limited stock available.

Applications close Friday 27 October

After 23 years at our current site at 510 K’rd Starkwhite is delighted to be moving to a new purpose build gallery at 94 Newton Road. The gallery opens with a Jonny Niesche exhibition 12 May 2023. The new gallery, spread over 3 levels and having multiple galleries will allow us to present larger and more indepth projects giving artists a wonderful environment within which to work.

Starkwhite Auckland will be closed from 5pm 23 December and reopening 9 January.

Starkwhite Queenstown will be closed from 5pm 22 December and reopening 4 January.

We wish you a safe and happy holiday season.

Starkwhite will partner with Glorious to release an exclusive Fiona Pardington NFT, Manawarahi: Female and Male Huia Lovers MTG Hawkes Bay 2022.

The release goes live on the Glorious platform at 6.00pm NZT on 1 July. 

Manawarahi takes advantage of the flexible potential of NFTs to evolve and respond. The work is a diptych divided over time. Collectors who purchase Manawarahi will receive the first part, the huia pair, and at a later date, the second part, which will remain a closely guarded secret until release.

“I find the whole concept very intriguing,” Fiona says. “My photography is basically digital but taken through analogue lenses, so I like the idea of combining the tradition of still life with cutting edge technology. I also like that many people find things like blockchains and NFTs quite mysterious and a little bit magical. I like having that mystery feed back into my work. I’m really enjoying the way it lets me incorporate the element of surprise. Normally with photography what you see is what you get, but this playing with time and expectation is fun. Like any investment there’s an element of risk and I feel like I’m making that literal with the promise of the unknown in this work.”

Priced at NZ$2,000 inc. gst and in an edition of 100, there’s an expectation that the work will sell out quickly, and then be actively traded, especially as the release date of the second work approaches. Given that an NFT’s contract can attribute a percentage of resales back to the artist,  Pardington is donating all proceeds from resales to Wingspan, hopefully providing ongoing funding for their important work. Wingspan is a Rotorua-based charitable trust, which leads the conservation, education and research effort for Aotearoa’s birds of prey. https://www.wingspan.co.nz/

Starkwhite will present a joint booth with Melbourne based 1301SW at Sydney Contemporary 8-11 September 2022. The presentation will feature key works from gallery artists including Billy Apple, Petra Cortright, Mikala Dwyer, Bill Henson, Ann Veronica Janssens, Gerold Miller, Fiona Pardington and others. 

Image. Gerold Miller, TO 25, 2020, lacquered aluminium, 36.5 x 36.5cm

Applications close Friday 13 May

With this new project John Reynolds mixes rainwater with acrylics, gallows humour with dead seriousness, and ponders the seemingly simple question, ‘are we there yet?’ Slogans and provocations quoting activists, notably Greta Thunberg, spill across a wordy array of paintings and placard installations. A major solo show, Smoke & Mirrors claims that creativity is activism, and has a vital role regarding catastrophic climate change.

A witness to the pandemic at its most harrowing, when it first swept through New York City in the winter of 2020…Suddenly Still Life is the outcome of this experience, building on the artist’s exploration of the floral still-life. The botanical forms that have proven a well-spring of motifs, associations and compositional elements for Basher’s painting practice are approached through the rubric of three-dimensional space…Like his paintings, these bouquets are angular and sparse. The sculptures are water-jet cut and designed in low-relief so that they almost disappear when approached from the side.

Starkwhite is delighted to participate in Sydney Contemporary Presents 2020, an online edition of Sydney’s annual international art fair, with works by Martin Basher, Whitney Bedford and Seung Yul Oh. The fair runs from 1 – 31 October, 2020.

The exhibition Billy Apple. A Brand Looking for a Product 1962-2020 opens at the Hawkes Bay Art Gallery & Museum on Friday evening 25 September and runs to 21 March 2021.

Seung Yul Oh is showing a new suite of paintings in the exhibition FIRST LIGHT at Yavuz Gallery Sydney. Presented in partnership with Starkwhite, the exhibition, has been developed in response to the cancellation of this year's edition of Sydney Contemporary and the possibility that Australian galleries (and their artists) will not be able to travel to Auckland for the 2021 edition of the Auckland Art Fair. FIRST LIGHT follows the recent exhibition Fugitive Being at at Yavuz, which featured works by Fiona Pardington, and the next collaborative show will be presented at Starkwhite in 2021 (watch this space for updates).  Image: installation view of (left to right) Lean_Clap_02, Lean_Lift_02, Lean_Hold_02, , 2020, acrylic on canvas 300 x 250 mm each; Lean_Lift_03, 500 x 400 mm, Lean_Float_02, 300 x 200 mm

Clinton Watkins is in the lineup for ARS Electronic, the Festival for Art, Technology & Society, Newcastle, which runs from 9-13 September 2020.

Anthony Byrt's new book THE MIRROR STEAMED OVER tells the story of three young artists in sixties London who reshaped contemporary art and literature. The three groundbreakers in the story are Barrie Bates (who would become Billy Apple), David Hockney and Ann Quin. The book is published by Auckland University Press.

Our next exhibition, Performative Geographies, brings together work by Shanghai-based artist Jin Jiangbo and Auckland-based artist John Reynolds. The exhibition is scheduled to Open on Saturday 11 July, subject to our Shanghai consignment arriving on time. Read more…
Image: Jin Jiangbo, The Boundless Universe, 2019, in and wash on gold foil, 600 x 600 mm framed

Two new large-scale canvases by John Reynolds are showing at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery alongside the exhibition a land of graphite: McCahon and Otago.
Image: John Reynolds: The View from the Top of a Cliff, 2019, metallic paint maker on acrylic on linen, 2150 x 5835 mm

Len Lye's Sky Snake installation of seven swirling sky snakes is showing at the Len Lye Centre to 15 November.
Image: Len Lye, Sky Snakes (detail), courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation collection

Layla Rundeva-Mackay's exhibition ACC bcc Bananas runs from 9 June to 4 July 20202. Read more…
Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Glazed Bunch, 2018, oil on canvas, 1000 x 1200 mm