Whangārei Art Museum

03/05/2026

Give your mother a proper gift this Mother’s Day.

Until 10 May, tell us your purchase at Whangārei Art Museum is for your mother and receive 20% off.

No tricking!

30/04/2026

Sonya Lacey ⬤ Eveningness
On now until June 21, 2026

27/04/2026

Oliver Perkins ⬤ A contiguous body
On now until June 21, 2026

27/04/2026

We are on the hunt for a Collections & Programmes Manager!

This is a multifaceted role within a small, ambitious public art gallery, suited to someone who is comfortable working across collections, programmes, education, funding, reporting, and day-to-day operational delivery. Working closely with the Director, the Collections & Programmes Manager will help ensure that the Museum’s collection is cared for, researched, developed, and managed in line with policy, while also leading the delivery of public programmes, education initiatives, exhibition openings, and audience engagement activity.

Send all applications to [email protected] or apply through Seek.

26/02/2026

Oliver Perkins ⬤ A contiguous body
On now until June 21

A room prepares itself to receive. The door opens, the space clears, and the guest arrives. The guest gives the host a reason to open, a purpose for the prepared room. Over time, the positions blur. Traces are left-a scent, an impression. Something is given; something is taken. The exchange is never even.

To make is to negotiate. Canvas pulled tight, stretched across a frame. Glue made from animal collagen applied warm, staining the weave-pigment going *into* the surface rather than sitting on top of it. As the material dries it contracts, tightens, becomes drum-taut. Push and pull. Twist and turn. Layer and extract. The material has its own behaviours, its own timing. Work fast when the glue is wet; slow down when adhesion allows. A rhythm emerges between what is proposed and what is refused.

The studio accumulates. Offcuts pile in corners. Failed experiments persist. The debris of one project becomes raw material for another-brought back, folded in, given new accommodation. Nothing is entirely finished; nothing is entirely waste.

Space is not neutral. A wall is not just a surface to hang upon but a field to occupy, to interrupt, to draw into conversation. Painting opens outward-toward architecture, toward the body moving through a room. A painting can hold you in place or send you around a corner.

Objects hold something back. You can look at a thing, handle it, describe it in detail, and still something remains. This reserve is not a limit but a resource: what withdraws from one encounter may reveal itself in another; what seems inert alone may prove volatile in combination. The opacity of things is also their ability to surprise, to enter arrangements we couldn’t predict.

There is pleasure in this. The reveal of a form, the unexpected conversation between elements, the moment when materials do something unplanned. Experimentation is not grim labour. Questions are posed through material, form, and structure-and sometimes answered through continued making. What sustains curiosity is that objects keep offering more than we knew to ask for.

25/02/2026

Sonya Lacey ⬤ Eveningness
On now until June 21, 2026

In chronobiology, “eveningness” names a biologically influenced tendency toward later hours, not a habit or lifestyle choice. It sits at one end of a spectrum, opposite “morningness.” Most people fall somewhere in between, their rhythms shaped by genetics and age.

Eveningness is rarely treated as neutral variation. Schools start early. Workplaces expect morning presence. The evening-oriented are told to adjust. Researchers call the result “social jet lag”: chronic misalignment between the internal clock and imposed schedules. The health risks often attributed to eveningness-mood disorders, metabolic issues-appear to come not from the chronotype itself, but from being forced out of sync. The problem is mismatch, not the body.

Bodies stay synchronised to the 24-hour day through cues. Light is the most powerful, but sound, temperature, routine, and language also carry temporal information. A greeting like “good morning” is a timestamp. Traffic rises and falls with rush hour. We track these signals continuously, adjusting sleep and alertness to stay aligned with the world.

Time Isolation Units-environments developed for circadian research—remove or control these cues, so that researchers can observe what happens when the outside world stops providing timestamps. Sleep drifts. Perception shifts. The body settles into its own rhythm, slowly rotating out of phase. The walls of such units are layered with materials that block light, dampen sound, and shield against stray signals-copper among them, forming a barrier that stops information from passing through.

What such research reveals is that “day” is not a given. It is produced-by light, by architecture, by protocol. Time is something transmitted through channels and made believable through design. The same knowledge can support care and wellbeing, or serve optimisation: fitting workers to night shifts, extending the productive day.

24/02/2026

Have you always wanted to try printmaking?

Following our sold-out introduction to Lino Cut Printmaking Workshop, we are offering a longer short course spread over multiple days. Those who attended the initial workshop will find the first of these days a useful opportunity to consolidate skills, while new participants will be fully supported in learning the fundamentals from the start.

All materials are provided (including Prosecco). No prior experience needed.

A multi-session lino cut printmaking course exploring design, carving, inking, and editioning techniques in depth. Suitable

12/02/2026

Nau mai, haere mai ki Te Whare Toi o Whangārei

You are warmly invited to join us at Whangārei Art Museum
for the opening of

A contiguous body by Oliver Perkins

Saturday 21st February, 5 – 7pm

Whangārei Art Museum
91 Dent Street
Whangārei, Aotearoa

12/02/2026

Nau mai, haere mai ki Te Whare Toi o Whangārei

You are warmly invited to join us at Whangārei Art Museum for the opening of

Eveningness by Sonya Lacey

Saturday 21st February, 5 – 7pm

Whangārei Art Museum
91 Dent Street
Whangārei, Aotearoa

Design and typefaces by Nell May: Shadow wood type and Waitomo Sans

09/02/2026

Samuel Holloway, et al.
Upright Piano, 2025

Deaccessioned upright piano, modified for exhibition and destroyed as part of deinstallation.

The galleries are now closed for changeover.
We reopen 21 February with exhibitions by Oliver Perkins and Sonya Lacey.