Aotearoa Art Fair
Viaduct Events Centre
171 Halsey Street, Auckland CBD
Preview (VIP Pass and Premium+ Pass)
Thursday 30 April, 1pm - 5pm
Opening Night
Thursday 30 April, 5pm - 9pm
General Entry
Friday 1 May, 11am - 6pm
Saturday 2 May, 11am - 6pm
Sunday 3 May, 11am - 5pm
Bergman Gallery returns to the Aotearoa Art Fair with a presentation of new and recent works that move between cultural inheritance, lived experience and shifting perspectives across Aotearoa and the Pacific, bringing together Fatu Feu'u, Andy Leleisi'uao, Reuben Paterson, Tanja McMillan, Mahiriki Tangaroa, Joan Gragg and Alison Leauanae.
Fatu Feu’u ONZM stands as a foundational figure in contemporary Pacific art. Over five decades he has developed a visual language grounded in Samoan cultural systems. Motifs drawn from tatau, siapo, ufimata and Lapita forms are transformed through painting into bold compositions that bridge customary knowledge and modern practice. His work is held in major public collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and The Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.
A different generational perspective emerges in the work of Andy Leleisi’uao. Born and raised in South Auckland within a predominantly Samoan community, his practice reflects the complex realities of belonging in contemporary Aotearoa. Now working from Christchurch, his paintings draw together mythology, autobiography and urban life into complex narrative worlds shaped by the social terrain in which they were formed.
New works by Reuben Paterson map celestial constellations through fields of glitter and pearls. In The 9th Wave (Constellation Scorpio) and the diptych For as Long as You Want Me, I’m Yours (Constellation Orion), Cook Islands black pearls and Japanese freshwater pearls are plotted according to astronomical imagery captured by the Hubble telescope. Now based in New York, Paterson approaches the Pacific night sky from a newly displaced vantage point where oceanic navigation, Māori cosmology and contemporary astronomy intersect. The works draw parallels between coral cities beneath the sea and the star fields of Te Ikaroa, the Milky Way, inviting attention to tangotango—the darkness between the stars.
Works by Tanja McMillan and Alison Leauanae introduce materially distinct counterpoints. McMillan’s paintings stage surreal pictorial worlds populated by animated figures, animals and objects, where sweetness and disquiet coexist within sharply resolved compositions. In contrast, Leauanae’s hand-stitched works build pattern and memory slowly through repetition and restraint. Working with thread and paper, she constructs meditative surfaces where geometry and stitch become a quiet record of identity, migration and lived experience.
A strong Cook Islands presence is carried through Mahiriki Tangaroa and Joan Gragg. Tangaroa presents the major painting Gathering at Summer Harvest, a preview of her forthcoming exhibition Our Days of Harvest, opening at Bergman Gallery Rarotonga in July 2026. The work reconsiders the meaning of “harvest” in the Cook Islands today. Traditionally, harvest implied cultivation, stewardship and the sharing of abundance within the community. Tangaroa places these values against the emerging debate surrounding seabed mining, where the extraction of polymetallic nodules promises immense wealth while raising unresolved questions about responsibility and distribution.
Joan Gragg’s paintings arise from a lifetime observing the rhythms of contemporary Cook Islands life. Her work reflects the everyday character of Rarotongan society—its humour, personalities, social gatherings and traditions—rendered through a distinctive sense of colour, composition and mood. Gragg paints with the perspective of a lived observer, attentive to both continuity and change.
We do look forward to seeing you at the art fair.
