The artworks in this exhibition, from the 1970s to today, exemplify how individuals have inflected history, especially its genres of documentation and visual record. We might also describe the period from which they come as being ‘after-McCahon’, in reference to one of New Zealand’s foremost painters whose practice reconceived the genre of landscape painting in this country to incorporate a powerfully individual message.

Art by well-known New Zealand artists as well as recent figures conveys anecdotal or even mythological importance as part of the subjective approach of individual artists.

Part of New Zealand Art: Opening the Past to the Ever-changing Present | Toi Aotearoa: Mai i Mua ki te Ao Hurihuri, a series of exhibitions drawn from our collection.