Mokopōpaki

Private View 5 May – 26 October 2026

Toi Tauranga Art Gallery 108 Willow Street Tauranga 3141 Enter from Masonic Park

Open daily 10am – 4pm

Private View opens the door to some very special artworks drawn from private homes across Tauranga Moana.

Hung and clustered around dining tables and in the heart of living rooms, these artworks carry stories of their makers and their collectors. A Toss Woollaston painting that was a gift from a father to a daughter; two sisters who meet Reuben Paterson in his New York studio as he is making an artwork glimmer; a protest piece by Ralph Hotere, that reminds the collector of their brother’s career as an All Black in the 70s and the political uproars of the time; manu (bird) figures, created by an artist named Te Maari, who receives personal letters and creates artefacts based on the stories they receive — and many other precious belongings on display.

Together with furniture, lighting and rugs curated by interior designer Kathrine McDonald and supplied by exceptional designers from Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond, Private View invites us to consider the conversations between art, interiors, and everyday life.

Flush A group exhibition Presented by Treadler, Straw House and Mokopōpaki 30 April – 9 May 2026

40 Anzac Ave, Auckland 1010 Opening Wednesday 29 April 6 – 8pm

Hours: Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 4pm and by appointment 

Jane Zusters has been sifting through her own photographic archive and, as a result, in collaboration with the gallery Mokopōpaki, has produced Matters Arising: Jane Zusters: Looking At You: Desire and the Female Gaze, Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1970s & Early 1980s. The book takes the unusual format of a set of meeting minutes – a meeting held to discuss the development of the book you are holding. Reading the minutes from any meeting might feel like a chore, but this is the exact opposite, as Zusters presents nine photographs she took 40-50 years ago and assesses her past work from the vantage point of her current and older self. Wisdom and experience inform her commentary, and the artist's honesty is enviable. Matters Arising is the latest in her long-standing interrogation into and questioning of the nature of photography: the roles of the sitter, the photographer, the camera and the viewer are not fixed, and each can influence how images might be read. Zusters overachieves, succinctly, in this short book that is witty, poignant, perceptive and entertaining throughout.

Matters Arising is a new book, co-published by Mokopōpaki and em45 to accompany the exhibition by Jane Zusters at Envy, Wellington.

à la Tōrea Pango (in the manner of the variable oystercatcher) is a collaborative collection of works by eight different artists at Laree Payne Gallery, Hamilton.

What is somewhat unusual about this array of pieces is how they intertwine with each other at various interpretative levels.

So we have Andrew Barber’s Stiff Blanket (A man as a bird in a blanket), which presents as a kind of Swanndri confection on a stretcher to mimic an abstract painting; think Rosalie Gascoigne without the letters or the grids of Andrew Farquhar or further afield, Ad Reinhardt.

Barber in his day job is in the business of protecting New Zealand native birds, and he, accordingly, perches his canvas (blanket of protection) on a low plinth of orange wooden legs to reference the oystercatcher. By turns quirky, charming and humourous, here we see high art in an engaging exchange with Kiwi vernacular in a playful configuration for serious ends.

Next to this we have an even more coltish and frisky work with more than a touch of the impish – two ersatz rocking horses, come sawhorses, called Orange Builder's Pony With Ear Bonnet or Protective Muff. What this mouthful presents us with is a concoction of elements that together resemble a sawhorse turned into a kind of toy, complete with ears made from a glove and tail constructed from a hand duster. Stroller wheels as hooves and a button, when pressed, plays a sound, completes the picture, or sculpture in this case.

Again charming, funny and arch. We are in an arena where art mixes it up with designer plaything with the smallest nod to the notion of protection, courtesy of PĀNiA!

And toy is again invoked in the third member of the team – Te Maari and her dolls made of felt and wool with crocheted elements, sporting Māori motifs and given the names of birds, one of which is the oystercatcher. The playful is being employed here to signal matters of social and cultural significance.

Then up steps Dr P with a couple of loaves of real bread placed on a wooden chopping board. Called Bird Sculpture, what we have here is an altered readymade, altered because this sliced Vogel’s loaf, held together by thin bamboo stakes, has been left outside for the birds to peck at, then rescued before the thing was completely demolished. A collaborative piece between ‘man’ and members from the avian population.

As is becoming apparent, there is a bird theme starting to emerge here. But we’re not done.

A.A.M. Bos has found a distressed plastic snail trap and ‘turned’ it into a bird bath and water trough. This readymade, hung from the ceiling of the gallery, recalling the Dadaists, has undergone a transformation from common object to art piece, from animal trap to animal enhancer.

That transformational exercise is given a final twist in the work of JBB & Greg Thomas who, in a direct link with the work of Dr P, have taken Vogel’s advertising, screen printed the text and formatted it into plastic bags containing information about the original mixed grain.

The final flourish sees Prairie Hatchard-McGill create some bespoke curtains for the single window in the gallery. This baroque collaged fabrication, Scrape (diptych) – mixed media elements on silk and linen, presents something that conjures with the past, florid and blowsy, an excuse to indulge in a kind of broken-down flamboyance complete with dangling attached pearls.

Altogether this is a show that kicks up its heels in a very postmodern spirited and good humoured manner, engaging the viewer at multiple levels. Well worth a visit, a collaboration between Laree Payne Gallery and Mokopōpaki.

à la Tōrea Pango 14 May – 7 June 2025

Andrew Barber A.A.M. Bos Dr P Prairie Hatchard-McGill JBB PĀNiA! Te Maari Greg Thomas

In collaboration with Laree Payne Gallery 286 Victoria Street, Hamilton Opening Thursday 15 May 5 – 7pm

The variable oystercatcher/tōrea pango is a familiar, stocky coastal bird with a long, bright orange bill, found around much of New Zealand. They are often seen in pairs probing busily for shellfish along beaches or in estuaries. Tōrea pango are long-lived, with some birds reaching 30+ years of age.

The existence of different colour morphs (black, intermediate or ‘smudgy’, and pied) caused early confusion, and they were variously thought to be different species, forms, or hybrids. This confusion was compounded by a cline in morphs, with the proportion of all-black birds increasing from north to south.

Identification Tōrea pango are large, heavily-built shorebirds. Adults have black upperparts, their underparts vary from all black, through a range of ‘smudgy’ intermediate states to white. They have a conspicuous, long bright orange bill (longer in females), and stout coral-pink legs. The iris is red and eye-ring orange. Downy chicks occur in two colour morphs; they have a black bill, pale-mid grey upper parts with black markings, and either grey or off-white underparts. First-year birds have a dark tip to the bill, browner dorsal plumage, and grey legs.

Voice: tōrea pango are very vocal; loud piping is used in territorial interactions when alarmed, and they have a loud flight call similar to other oystercatchers. Chicks are warned of danger with a sharp, loud ‘chip’ or ‘click’.

Habitat Tōrea pango breed most commonly on sandy beaches, sand spits, and in dunes, but will use a wide variety of coastal habitat types, including shell banks, rocky shorelines, and less often gravel beaches. They forage in all these areas and also on inter-tidal mudflats in estuaries, and on rock platforms. Tōrea pango are not usually seen far from the coast, but will forage in paddocks, and occasionally nest a short distance inland, usually on mown or grazed grassy areas or bare ground. A very few nest around lakes or a short distance up braided rivers.

Breeding Variable oystercatchers breed in monogamous pairs, and defend territories vigorously against neighbours. Nests are normally simple scrapes in the sand, often with a marker of driftwood, vegetation, or flotsam. The 2-3 eggs are usually laid from October onwards (rarely September), and replaced if lost. Incubation is shared and takes about 28 days. Chicks fly at 6-7 weeks-old, and late chicks may not fledge until March. Chicks are vigorously defended by both parents, often well after fledging. In Northland and Auckland, most birds do not breed until they are 5 years or older.

Behaviour and ecology Tōrea pango are often highly aggressive towards people close to nests or chicks, dive-bombing (sometimes making contact) and screeching. They also undertake distraction displays on the ground in defence of eggs and chicks.

Unlike most shorebirds, tōrea pango feed their young. Small chicks often remain hidden under vegetation, rocks, etc, with parents bringing food; this probably reduces the risk of predation by gulls and harriers. As chicks grow, they gradually find more of their own food, but are often seen begging from parents well after fledging. Sibling rivalry is common; when hatching is asynchronous, there is often large variation in size of the chicks within a brood. Adults commonly false-brood to conceal the location of nest or chicks.

“Make it new” was the modernist mantra of the early twentieth century and despite all the subsequent critiques of modernism and its replacement with another ism, the call to be to fresh and original still both applies and is practiced by the avant-garde today.

The Dadaists made it new, as did the Pop artists, and there are elements of both aesthetics embodied in the craft of artist, Te Maari and her most recent show, Epicenter (E), at Laree Payne Gallery. Yet who would have thought that stuffed ‘toys’ (knitted dolls), could work as art objects? Well, we’ve had knitted food and knitted Māori Meeting Houses, so why not?

I love this kind of bold inventiveness that goes outside the boundaries, abolishes hierarchies, that sees the employment of the ‘low rent’ and so-called banal object in the services of art. The Dadaists did it first and a long time ago. It seems like we are just catching up.

Te Maari has created a series of stuffed dolls, made of felt (employing hand spun Shetland, Corriedale and merino wool), complete with knitted apparel. They are all the same size, approximately 30 cm tall (your average cuddly toy); but what makes these sculptures, Manu Figures, special is the treatment and symbolism loaded on to them, so they carry the weight of social and moral significance.

These are humanoid creations, but they represent, by their colour, design and configuration, New Zealand native birds, and they are named as such. So, there is already an element of anthropomorphism operating here. The colour and texture of each bird is incorporated into the fabric, but beyond that there are no obvious or blatant bird-like shapes and formations going on. The dolls/sculptures all have similar configured faces and bodies, but with slightly different garments and outfits together with embroidered patterns that operate as moko-like forms on their faces.

They are a delight to behold and beautifully staged in the gallery arena, each one suspended in space on invisible cord and caged inside small Perspex platforms, which affords a kind of otherworldly spectacle to these pieces, placed as they are in a parallel line afloat in the middle of the gallery.

So, what’s the point?

Birds presented as human have a certain discombobulating effect, as does any anthropomorphic trope. We, the viewers, are provided with another lens through which to look at the familiar, which makes it importantly unfamiliar. And the lens here is to shift the category so that we apprehend the birds as something equal to and like us. This can be a useful exercise, particularly in a world of rampant consumerism attendant on the exploitation of the natural habitat. One of the Manu Figures has embroidered tear drops coursing down the side of its face.

At another level, given the artist is Māori, and together with the presence of identifiable Māori design motifs on the sculptures, one can read into the work a commentary on the effect of colonisation, not only on the native bird population, but also on the native human population.

A further layer is added with the Manu sculptures being given names: Sammy Haupapa, Polly Wiremu and the like, providing a more personal touch. And then beyond that, each work comes, alongside the title, with a given location - Davenport, the Bowery, Peachgrove Road, Broadway, etc. This is a cosmopolitan bunch where the famous and not-so-famous places on the world map share the same territory—and thus a democratising element enters the equation.

This is complemented by the fact that there is a mix of native and introduced birds referred to in the collection - starlings, birds from Europe and Asia - sit alongside kingfisher, kakapo, pukeko, huia and stitch bird, a nice and appropriately inclusive touch in today’s conflicted political landscape where some play a grievous game of identity politics. We are all the same species: endangered humans, irrespective of colour, identity or race. There’s a lot going on here and best of all, the delivery.

This is a clever show, seemingly unassuming, charming and winsome at first glance, but coming with a communique that can challenge and unsettle. This it does so in an adroit and quiet manner. Shrewd and astute stuff.

Hongerwinter is a stapled, A5-sized publication accompanying the exhibition at Envy gallery, Wellington. Organised by Mokopōpaki, the exhibition featured sculptural work by Yllwbro, A.A.M. Bos, Dr P and Te Maari.

Since 2017, the Auckland-based Mokopōpaki has variously operated as a dealer gallery, exhibition committee and publisher: ‘We are a critical collective or whānau who want to make “art for people” accessible. We apply Māori approaches to exhibition-making and the production of artwork. We work together to encourage and support emergent and established artists from across the generations.’

Their exhibition catalogues are often self-published and limited-edition booklets in various formats which elucidate and expand on the practices of represented artists. 

Hongerwinter is presented in a plastic slip that has been screen-printed to look like a Vogel’s mixed grain bag, with Dr P’s Very Thin Vogels, 2024 seemingly stamped on top.

The introductory text expresses artist A.A.M. Bos’s appreciation for sparrows – their ubiquity and tenacity, and as a symbol of peace and plenty for the artist’s mother who lived through devastation and famine during World War II in the Netherlands. The nursery rhyme ‘Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’ is broken down line by line as an apparently innocuous verse containing layers of disturbing historical fact and imagery relating to Mary Tudor (1516–1558). Yllwbro authors a conversation between siblings Kōkako and Miss Wētā, observing the dust-bathing habits of the migrant sparrows.

Reading this little publication is like being thrown from a garden into the bush then back onto the lawn, with a dizzying array of references seamlessly woven through its otherwise modest pages.

Upon entering Envy, visitors are greeted by a surreal tableau reminiscent of a suburban backyard, where the features are rendered inert by their display. An empty birdbath covered in moss sits in the middle of the gallery, facing a digital photograph of a domestic sparrow, the gaze of which is fixed directly on the viewer. In the corner, an empty steel-wire hanging basket is suspended from the ceiling, evoking the presence of a security camera. A section of rusted corrugated fence, sourced directly from Dr P’s garden adorns the wall, serving as the backdrop to Yllwbro’s intricately detailed birdhouse, complete with its own wallpaper.

As one adjusts to the scenery, smaller details emerge, such as Yllwbro’s replica of the Wētā Hotel, a wooden box designed to trap and display wētā insects behind a small pane of glass, similar to those used in local wildlife sanctuaries. This installation recalls 19th-century scientific plates that catalogued unknown species from the New World, reflecting Enlightenment hierarchies of taxonomy and control. Nearby, two loaves of Vogel's bread rest on a chopping board, their surfaces marked by distinctive sparrow nibbles, forming a collaborative sculpture that embodies the ephemeral interactions within contemporary gardens. 

The garden, as we know it in Aotearoa New Zealand, manifests early settlers’ anxieties regarding the progress of the colonial project. The division of industrial and domestic space (of which the garden was exemplary) was a relatively new development within European middle-class society, yet quickly became a defining characteristic of what was considered ‘civilised’ culture, a standard by which an emerging colony might be judged. Henry William Petre, the colonial treasurer of New Munster Province, assuaged the Crown’s anxieties regarding the success of the colony in a letter, directly referencing the proliferation of the manicured garden. 

This show interrogates this country’s colonial artifacts through the lineage of artistic parody and appropriation, as practiced by figures such as Francis Picabia and Marcel Broodthaers. Just as Picabia’s parodies of glamour models nullified the presence of the artistic author, A.A.M. Bos’s Birds of the Air subverts objective categorisation of birdlife through genre mimicry. Hongerwinter’s delicately arranged exhibition of physical objects utilises the readymade in the context of New Zealand’s distinctly quaint and tumbledown gardens. Its intentionality places the colony under a microscope, prompting viewers to consider the assumed normalcy of a garden’s features as laden with meaning, rather than as harmless decor.

The references to Dutch influence initially seem convivial and tongue-in-cheek: Vogel’s bread paired with Dutch Gouda is shared, yet inherent in these gestures is an invitation to reflect on the historical circumstances of the colony. As Louis Althusser suggests, art reveals what we perceive and feel—distinct from knowing—as it emerges from and engages with its originating ideology. The alchemy of each readymade work inspires less an allegorical or metaphorical interpretation and more a mnemonic device to consider the naturalisation of alienation, without requiring viewer activation as a prerequisite.

Hongerwinter is a new book, co-published by Mokopōpaki and Envy to accompany the exhibition by Yllwbro, A.A.M. Bos, Dr P and Te Maari at Envy, Wellington.

Hongerwinter (2024) ka puta mai i WARY—A Survey (2018) ki Mokopōpaki, Ākarana.

Title: Hongerwinter Creator: Yllwbro, A.A.M. Bos, Dr P, Te Maari, authors; Mokopōpaki, author Contributor: Mokopōpaki, issuing body; Envy, issuing body Series: Mokopōpaki (Series), 10 May–8 June 2024 Publisher: Auckland, New Zealand: Mokopōpaki and Envy ISSN: 2537-8783 Publication Date: May 2024 Format: 24 pages; 21 cm Edition: 200 Notes: Screenprinted bag made by Greg Thomas

Wellington gallery Envy's booth was likewise transporting, thanks largely to Dr P's Breakfast With Broodthaers (2023).

The mixed media installation of fishbones and shellfish on steel and aluminium kitchenware—including a pot of mussel shells trapped mid-explosion and a tray of chemically-fixed bread rolls—painted a portrait of a harbour dweller surviving on kaimoana and copies of the New Zealand Herald.