Art News - Winter 2026 - Issue 208

DEREK HENDERSON speaks to Emil McAvoy ahead of the (reworked, revised and expanded) second-edition release of his book The Terrible Boredom of Paradise. Accompanying the interview sits a photo of Henderson, taken by Darryl Ward in New Lynn, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 1987. Leafā Wilson speaks with Kirikiriroa Hamilton-based ABIGAIL AROHA JENSEN and we capture some pre-exhibition workings ahead of The Poutry Yard showing at Robert Heald Gallery. Dr Penelope Jackson MNZM reviews Broadley Speaking, a major survey of NIGEL BROWN ONZM’s practice. Considered one of Aoteroa New Zealand’s most significant narrative and figurative artists, Brown speaks on his legacy, career highs and life lows.

We zip to Australia, where Lara Chapman provides a preview of SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY, before its showing at Carriageworks in September. Elsewhere, she interviews MIKE HEWSON and JUSTIN PATON, who provide contemplation on The Key’s Under The Mat exhibition, a monumental temporary domain at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Back in Aotearoa, Dr Emily O’Hara interviews OPHELIA MIKKELSON JONES ahead of the launch of Men Carrying Flowers Vol. 2, a book that examines intimate gesture in public spaces. Dina Jezdić speaks with NEPHI TUPAEA ahead of her exhibition at Tim Melville Gallery. Titled Assimilation, the works examine reappropriation as a language “to disrupt the colonial gallery”. SARA BLACK plays with perspective to create stimulating double-shadow forms in a still-life photoshoot that creates ART-ADJACENT INTERSECTIONS between interiors and fashion.

Jane Wallace visits Ana Iti, mid-install of Ngahere Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Dina Jezdić reviews In the garden at Ivan Anthony. Upon a monumental canvas, ANDREW McLEOD paints texture as emotional information, as a register of vulnerability and weight. Clare Gemima visits Coastal Signs and provides thought on Someday My Prince Will Come by TIMOTHY WEBBY. JESSIE WONG (of Yu Mei) and GEORGIA CURRIE (of Flowers) share their fundamental values, and poet ISLA HUIA provides parting-words poetry that responds to Song Dong’s Waste Not, a work that left a lasting impression on her as a 12-year-old viewer.