Untitled #6. From the portfolio: 10 Screenprints

The free-est and purest aesthetic statements of the twentieth century have been made in abstract painting.

Pioneering Māori artist Ralph Hotere inserted this quote, by American minimalist Ad Reinhardt, in one of his exhibition catalogues in London in the 1960s. Hotere was inspired by the purity of Reinhardt’s pared-back aesthetic.

Hotere’s work has often been discussed in relation to Reinhardt’s, but this exhibition shows their work together in conversation for the first time. It also includes interventions by Māori sculptor Matt Pine, who like Hotere, attended the Central School of Art and Design in London in the 1960s and whose work is similarly associated with American minimalism.

This exhibition focuses on minimalist art and explores both its influence and how it was absorbed and reimagined within Māori modernism.