Tēnei Papa TīoiThis Swaying Earth

This exhibition features works by artists and photographers including George Vernon Hudson, Nancy Adams, John Buchanan, Sarah Featon, Herbert Dobbie, and Ayesha Green.

Diatoms are tiny organisms that live in oceans, rivers, and lakes. The 19th century saw a craze for arranging the silica skeleton fossils of diatoms and other micro-organisms on glass slides for viewing through microscopes. Photographer Wayne Barrar has delved into this ‘glass archive’ to explore its microscopic wonders.

This exhibition demonstrates how artists and makers work with nature – using forms and materials to connect with knowledge and stories held in the natural world around us.

Persian stories often begin with یکی بود یکی نبود (‘yeki bood, yeki nabood’), or ‘one was, one was not’. Here, artworks by Selina Ershadi and Pauline Rhodes explore ideas of presence and absence to tell stories about place and memory.

This exhibition provides a broad experience of hīnaki (eel traps). As well as displaying these taonga, it focusses on two early museum expeditions, Māori relationships with two significant rivers, and contemporary artworks related or responding to hīnaki.

This exhibition explores the different ways that artists in Aotearoa have expressed their relationship to the land – to the places we live in.