Gareth Barlow

We are delighted to share this poignant, engaging, and captivating work from Gareth Barlow’s ‘Aranga’ series, ‘Shadows Of The Ashes’. Created in acrylic and charcoal on paper, includes charcoal from the burnt taonga the work is based on.

This artwork was a finalist in the 2022 National Contemporary Art Award.

Paper Size: 1050 x 750 mm

Gareth Barlow is a contemporary New Zealand artist living in Marlborough.

In paintings, Barlow works primarily with a blend of acrylics and charcoals. Evoking an ephemeral and transcendent quality to the structure of his large-scale and portraits, Barlow’s symbolic compositions often feature native New Zealand birds and taonga.

Expressed through a deep reverence for the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, Barlow’s iconographic exploration of te ao Māori has earned him the respect of the Māori King, honoured to present King Tūheitia with some of his art.

Of his practice, Barlow comments, “I sometimes feel that on anyone’s art journey, if you don’t have more questions than answers, you’re not on the right path.” This statement rings true to anyone engaging in subject matter that is considered living taonga; Barlow interrogates this intersectionality and determines that he happily exits somewhere in the in-between, traversing the relational space between Pākehā and Māori worlds.

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