Te Tuhi Presents Three New Commissions By Artists From Aotearoa

For the second exhibition season of 2025, Te Tuhi presents four new exhibitions including three newly commissioned works by New Zealand artists Sean Hill, Pounamu Rurawhe and Whiro Walker, and Grant Priest, as well as a major moving image work by Chinese artist Liu Chuang.

Liu Chuang presents Lithium Lake and Island of Polyphony II (2023), a 3-channel video installation that challenges human narratives of technological progress.

Sean Hill presents Flowergy, a large-scale painted sculpture exploring the intersection between nature, energy, and art.

Grant Priest presents passthru, a single unbroken shot researching themes of prison labour and land transformation.

On Te Tuhi’s Billboards at Parnell Station, Pounamu Rurawhe and Whiro Walker present Their Eyes Are Watching You, a collaborative site-specific research project examining the relationships between whenua, people, and the waste the public produce and leave behind.

Opening event: Saturday 3 May 2025 – everyone is welcome to join in celebrating with artists and curators from 4-6pm for speeches and shared kai. All the exhibitions will run until 6 July 2025.

Lithium Lake and Island of Polyphony II (2023) by Liu Chuang is a three-channel video work that layers together a vast and discursive network of speculative research.

The film challenges human narratives of technological progress by exploring the confluences of sonic and Cold War histories, metallurgy and evolutionary theory, and science-fiction and religion.

Liu asks us to attune our senses to the memory of the Earth’s polyphonic past, and to its enduring legacies of polyphonic singing, to suggest how mutualism and cooperation might provide an antidote to cycles of technological lock-ins.

Curated by Amy Weng, this is the first presentation of Lithium Lake and Island of Polyphony II in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Read more about the exhibition and the artist here.

Flowergy is a large-scale painted sculpture by Sean Hill exploring the intersection between nature, energy, and art. The title is a fusion of “flow,” “flower,” and “energy,” reflecting the dynamic relationship between these elements.

Central to the work is a frequency current—symbolising the vital force of water and its importance to the ecosystem. Just as rivers provide nourishment to the land, the artist uses colour and abstract forms to convey how energy flows through both the natural world and the artwork itself.

Through this project, Hill invites viewers to experience the landscape not just as a place, but as an ongoing, interconnected force that shapes both the artwork and the world around us.

Newly commissioned by Te Tuhi, Flowergy is curated by Andrew Kennedy.

Read more about the exhibition and the artist here.

The central plateau of the North Island embodies a history of state-driven interventions: the planting of the Kaingaroa Forest, the construction of State Highway 1, the Tongariro Power Scheme, and the widespread use of superphosphates to boost soil fertility.

Such projects relied heavily on prison labour, linking land transformation to systems of punitive control. passthru reflects on these transformations through a single unbroken shot capturing a car windscreen and rear-view mirror passing between Tūrangi and Waiōuru.

Viewed behind stainless-steel mesh, the work challenges the implied freedoms of the road and the screen, revealing to us the infrastructures that shape the landscape and perpetuate state narratives of productivity, ownership and control.

Newly commissioned by Te Tuhi, passthru is curated by Andrew Kennedy.

Read more about the exhibition and the artists here.

About Te Tuhi

Te Tuhi is a leading platform for contemporary art in Aotearoa New Zealand, with a programme consciously and continually shaped towards rigorous, adventurous and socially engaged artistic experimentation. Te Tuhi’s primary focus is on commissioning both national and international artists to make new work by creating stimulating contexts for artists to respond to and work within.

Te Tuhi presents work in its galleries in Pakuranga and Parnell, around Auckland and Aotearoa, internationally and online. Te Tuhi offers artists and curators opportunities to develop their practice through studios, awards, residencies and internships both in Aotearoa and overseas. Integrated with its exhibitions, Te Tuhi provides public programmes for general audiences and for schools.

Te Tuhi has been embedded in its local community for 50 years, delivering arts and cultural experiences for schools, young people, community groups and people of all backgrounds and ages. Arts Out East is Te Tuhi’s community arts brokering programme for the Howick Local Board area in East Auckland. Te Tuhi operates O Wairoa Marae, an urban marae in Howick; Te Tuhi Café, Aotearoa’s first training café for people with intellectual disabilities; and Te Taiwhanga Taiohi, East Auckland’s Youth Space in Botany Town Centre. Te Tuhi’s building in Pakuranga also hosts a vast range of independent community groups.

© Scoop Media