Bird Life

Chris Heaphy's exhibition features paintings populated with sentient beings—birds and heads, eyes observant and waiting. Rich, sonorous colours are sponged, poured and squeegeed behind vessels and feathers on painterly grounds. One work, You're Somehow Always Here, is cool and dark, layered with emerald greens, teals and striations that reference the glacial rivers of Te Wai Pounamu in the South Island, speaking to Heaphy's Ngai-Tahu heritage and whakapapa to Waitaha and Arahura. The paintings function as contemporary history works—sometimes quiet but often turbulent, with rhythms and agitation that feel almost seismic. Across the exhibition, Heaphy's familiar lexicon appears: female figures, pianos, dogs and other guardians—spiritual, floral and animal—suggesting a future orientation. Like the whakatauki "ka mua, ka muri," the works propose a looking backwards into the future, with eyes fixed on the past. All works are acrylic on Belgian linen.