AUT Visual Arts

Opening today at GRACE, AUT Toi Ataata MVA whānau brunelle dias primbs’ “mysterium rationis” from 3pm! Grace, Rationalist House, 64 Symonds St, Tāmaki Makaurau Open Fri 11-4, Sat 11-4, & by appointment - In mysterium rationis, brunelle dias primbs enacts a reciprocal touch between image and world, where paintings emerge as both witness and offering. The works gather souvenirs of lived and inherited experience, as memory and image oscillate across the canvas. Shaped by the conditions of tourism and family travel, the “old world” empire is reframed through faith, migration, and inheritance. Within this shifting ground, dias primbs traces a consciousness unfolding between reverence and critique. - brunelle dias primbs (India, Aotearoa New Zealand) is a painter who attends to the figure and its painterly ground. Often diaristic, her practice explores ideas of temporality, sacredness, and the interconnection between the self and its environment. dias primbs holds a Master of Visual Arts from AUT School of Art and Design. Image: horse phases, 2026 (detail) See: /mysteriumrationis @autvisualart @autartanddesign @autuni @grace_aotearoa @brunellediaspora #auttoiataatawhānau #autartists #autpainters

Today at 5.30pm! Panel Discussion on Collaboration with Fiona Amundsen, Gavin Hipkins, Dieneke Jansen, Marcos Mortensen Stegall! - Thursday 14 May 5pm, for a 5.30pm start Gallery 1 Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery 40 ST Paul St. “As a special closing event for the exhibition Housing Relations, Te Wai Ngutu Kākā is pleased to stage a panel discussion that brings together four lens-based artists to discuss their distinct and diverse approaches to collaboration. Each practitioner has collaborated extensively across their careers for highly specific reasons, be it to introduce raw experimentation into their practice, to extend forums for discourse and exchange, or as a means of broadening and deepening their approach to practice-based research in ways that overcome the limitations of singular authorship.” @autvisualart @autartanddesign @autuni #auttoiataatawhānau #autvisualartsresearch

Tomorrow at 12 midday! Lunchtime Talks - Antonia Nisbet in conversation with Dr Fiona Amundsen about Antonia’s PhD show: Arriving in Stages!! - Gallery 2 Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery 40 ST Paul St. https://ngutukaka.nz/exhibitions/antonia-nisbet-arriving-in-stages The show closes on Friday 22nd May! Hours are 10–5. - Image: Newsprint scan of ‘Arriving in Stages’ studio documentation (banners, signs, systems) 2020. @autvisualart @autvisualart @autspatialdesign @autuni @milestheorange #auttoiataatawhānau #autphd #autartists

AUT Toi Ataata PhD student Makyla Curtis is presenting at Printopia this weekend! ... At the Print Fair + is giving an Artist talk on Sunday! Printopia Festival 1–3 May 2026 Makyla has a stand at the Print Fair Sat 2 May, 12-5 & Sun 3 May, 12-4 at The Button Factory 2 Abbey Street. Artist talk - Makyla Curtis | “Printmaking with Nature: botanical printmaking tips and tricks for working with plant materials, natural inks, dyes and paper” Sun 3 May, 10–10:45am at Studio One Toi Tū 1 Ponsonby Road (Room 10). https://printopia.nz/print-fair-2/ https://printopia.nz/artists-talks/ @autvisualart @autartanddesign @autuni #autphd #autartists #bookarts #printmaking

Massive congratulations to Toi Ataata Visual Arts at AUT PG alumni and lecturer Tony Guo and MVA student and 3D Lab Technician Erika Holm on being recipients of an Arts Foundation 2026 Springboard Award!! We are very proud of you both! #autuni #visualarts #tonyguo #erikaholm #springboard @guotentag @erikaholm__ @autartanddesign

We're looking forward to celebrating Joe Jowitt's exhibition tomorrow evening, Thursday 23 April 5-7pm, see you there! Joe Jowitt Almost Completely (finished) 24 April - 22 May 2026 Gallery Three Joe Jowitt’s Almost Completely (finished) investigates what happens when we lean into failure, loosen the grip on optimisation, and let mischief steer the making. Jowitt’s playful and comedic approach to artmaking seeks to interrogate our relationship with technology, language, and materiality. In the face of continual emergency and myriad pressures on environment, culture, and meaning itself, Jowitt asks, can laughter create momentary communities of understanding? His rudimentary object-making, diagrammatic drawings, and rickety animatronics, render familiar ‘meaning-machines’—such as radios, remotes, signposts— as laconic stand-ins. Through a seesaw of recognition and ambiguity, these objects push the rudimentary approach of a comedy ‘sketch’ into sculptural and drawing processes. In this way he proposes play as a serious philosophical stance: a mode of thinking that scrambles habitual frameworks, embraces erratum, and proposes speculative possibilities for holding things lightly in an unstable troubled world. Philosophical scaffolding for the project comes from Henri Bergson’s treatise on humour and his ideas around the tension between the mechanical and the vital. Alongside this, Jowitt’s practice draws from a range of thinkers, from Alva Noë’s entanglement of art and life, to Bernard Stiegler’s technics as prosthetic thought, to Donna J. Haraway’s notion of ‘kinning’. Together, they frame humour as a connective force—a way to reorganise ourselves in the ‘thick present’ . This exhibition marks the completion of Jowitt’s MPhil studies. Congratulations @joseph_jowitt

It was all action for Antonia Nisbet’s PhD show install today - with supervisors Fiona A & Mon R and Tech Eddie! #goodtimes #installfun #itsgoingtobegood @autvisualart @antonia.nisbet

Antonia Nisbet’s exhibition 𝘈𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 grapples with our inability to comprehend the imminent potential of a decisive global catastrophe. In particular, Nisbet takes interest in the Doomsday Clock, one measure for determining the severity of such existential threat, which currently estimates that we are a mere ‘85 seconds to midnight’. With humour and wit, Nisbet develops a distinct vernacular for art making which is both materially and conceptually driven. Her installations combine text, banners, printed ephemera, and a range of participatory formats, to register daily, provisional modes of coping. Through improvised, accumulative, and durational processes, Arriving in Stages investigates the relationship between socio-political events and personal civic social response, cohering as a system of artworks that are concurrently provisional, critical, and temporally responsive. In this way the project asks what forms of attention, such as care, repair, love, and commitment, remain possible here and now. 𝘈𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 is the culmination of Antonia Nisbet’s PhD studies. The opening celebration is Thursday 23 April 5-7pm, all welcome.

Ngā mihi nui, to Janet Mazenier & Dr Emily O’Hara! — on the great kōrero about Janet’s PhD project, “Soul Place: Anam Áite” at Ngutu Kākā’s new Lunchtime Talks series today! The show closes on Friday! Hours are 10–5. Gallery 2 Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery https://ngutukaka.nz/exhibitions/soul-place-anam-aite @autvisualart @autartanddesign @autuni @janetmaz

Joe Jowitt’s 𝘈𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 (𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥) investigates what happens when we lean into failure, loosen the grip on optimisation, and let mischief steer the making. Jowitt’s playful and comedic approach to artmaking seeks to interrogate our relationship with technology, language, and materiality. In the face of continual emergency and myriad pressures on environment, culture, and meaning itself, Jowitt asks, can laughter create momentary communities of understanding? His rudimentary object-making, diagrammatic drawings, and rickety animatronics, render familiar ‘meaning-machines’—such as radios, remotes, signposts— as laconic stand-ins. Through a seesaw of recognition and ambiguity, these objects push the rudimentary approach of a comedy ‘sketch’ into sculptural and drawing processes. In this way he proposes play as a serious philosophical stance: a mode of thinking that scrambles habitual frameworks, embraces erratum, and proposes speculative possibilities for holding things lightly in an unstable troubled world. Philosophical scaffolding for the project comes from Henri Bergson’s treatise on humour and his ideas around the tension between the mechanical and the vital. Alongside this, Jowitt’s practice draws from a range of thinkers, from Alva Noë’s entanglement of art and life, to Bernard Stiegler’s technics as prosthetic thought, to Donna J. Haraway’s notion of ‘kinning’. Together, they frame humour as a connective force—a way to reorganise ourselves in the ‘thick present’ . This exhibition marks the completion of Jowitt’s MPhil studies. The opening celebration is Thursday 23 April 5-7pm, all welcome. @joseph_jowitt

It’s the last week to see Janet Mazenier’s PhD show – Soul Place: Anam Áite!! Plus, come along to hear Janet and Dr Emily O’Hara in conversation at Ngutu Kākā’s new Lunchtime Talks series tomorrow on Wednesday (15/04), from 12–12.30pm! Gallery 2 Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery https://ngutukaka.nz/exhibitions/soul-place-anam-aite The show closes on Friday! Hours are 10–5. https://ngutukaka.nz/events/lunchtime-talks-janet-mazenier-in-conversation-with-dr-emily-ohara @autvisualart @autvisualart @autspatialdesign @autuni @janetmaz #auttoiataatawhānau #autphd #autartists

This Saturday, PhD candidate ADJunct has an event at the Silos. Audio Foundation presents.... from the team who presented 2025’s stunning Mass Pointillistic Tryptych - A Black Line is a Black Hole That Went for a Walk A vortex of sound and motion conceived by ADJunct. Featuring live performances by Dick Move, Grecco Romank, TOOMS, and Trioglodyte, alongside multiple percussive ensembles and choreographed percussive movement. Working with the reverberation of Silo 6, the work brings together sound art, light and darkness, and choreographic action, unfolding within an expansive field. The result is neither concert nor installation, but a dynamic site of limits and excess. $20 Presales from UTR Audio Foundation Members free @audio.foundation