Gareth Barlow

The Kākā Convergence looks at the artist’s ongoing series of birds as messengers between our world and other dimensions. Birds sitting on wakahuia or carved wheku, explores Māori philosophies of the spirit world being the primary existence, and our world being a temporary journey. Birds being the connection between the different realms.

This one however, the artist has covered the wheku with leaves as his own journey takes on new life. Exploring more of his own ancestry, the Māori element has been covered as a new season dawns on his practice, and the leaves will fall in that time.

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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