Location: Opus Gallery, Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi — Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre

Immerse yourself in the wistful dreamscapes of leading Māori artist Star Gossage, presenting paintings inspired by her ancestral homeland – Pakiri Beach. 

The rural Pakiri landscape is Gossage’s turangawaewae — her physical, emotional and spiritual home — the very essence of her paintings. She mines the physical landscape, mixing local clays, limes and ochres with oil paints to create an earthy muted colour palette that references Ranginui (Sky father) and Papatuanuku (Earth mother). These primordial and wistful landscapes are often inhabited by mystical dream-like tupuna (ancestors) gazing back at the viewer, who seem imbued, as Mark Amery writes, ‘with collected memory and ancestry ... there's no innocence in the eyes of figures; they feel soaked in both love and sadness. The pupils of the eyes bore through you as if demanding that their stories be remembered.’

Star Gossage (b. 1973) is of Ngati Wai and Ngati Ruanui descent. In 1995, she graduated with a Diploma of Fine Art majoring in Computer Art and Film from the Otago Polytechnic School of Fine Arts, Dunedin. After graduating, she returned to live with her whanau on her ancestral land at Pakiri, north of Auckland. Since her return, she has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand, including the critically acclaimed ‘Five Māori Painters’ at Auckland Art Gallery in 2014. Her works are held in public collections, including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, James Wallace Arts Trust, and the University of Auckland Collection. In 2014, Gossage received a prestigious New Generation Award from the New Zealand Arts Foundation.