Waiora: Hemi Macgregor

Hemi Macgregor’s exhibition Waiora presents a body of work which acknowledges stories of environment and the ways our lives are set within it. Macgregor’s painted and sculptural works carry a visual language which explores positive and negative space, balance, tonal shifts, and layered movement. These elements call to foundational pūrākau (narratives) and expansive natural events as they are held within Mātauranga Māori. The exhibition acknowledges atua, whenua, and our personal journey within these interconnected foundations for daily life.

Within each work, the universal and personal set corresponding trajectories which somehow simultaneously catch our experience. Each work reflects a dynamic environment and a space which is both precise and poetic, or tangible and intangible. Painted gestures move like light on water and are then woven into layered, structural pattern.

Waiora includes Macgregor’s large-scale installation Te pōtangotango and others as works which prompt us to draw connection to events like the night sky, the shifting tide, the coming of spring and the surrounding shifts which might even connect us to our sense of place in the world. The stories told through this body of work speak to the significance of the dynamic relationship between people, place, and imagination.