Gareth Barlow

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

Barlow works primarily with a blend of acrylics and charcoals, evoking an ephemeral and transcendent quality within his large-scale portraits. His 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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