Day 1: Create & Challenge

Day 2: Protest & Demonstrate

Day 3: Tour & Explore

The Future of Monuments

Today, many want to pull down war memorials as expressions of bad politics, especially those memorials that legitimise evil and injustice. Are there 'good' war memorials—and who decides? Can we make use of 'bad' war memorials? How do we understand miscellaneous contemporary war-memorial projects, like Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and Ground Zero in New York, or Weta and Te Papa's The Scale of War and Peter Jackson 'colourising' World War I footage? What form could future memorials take?

Everyday Mysticism: Artists Respond 

8pm 

Sculptor Glen Hayward’s practice brings the everyday into the gallery in profound and absurd ways. Reconsidering familiar objects is a concern shared by other artists. Join us as they discuss their practices and why they find commonplace objects compelling. 

Photo: Tony Webster, Christopher Columbus Statue Torn Down at Minnesota State Capitol

Urn (Live)

9pm

Sonic artists Thomas Carroll (Ngati Maru, Hauraki) and Rob Tyler respond to the themes of Matarau. Fusing taonga pūoro and modular synthesis, they incorporate rongoā plants as a modulation source, to create works inspired by Māori philosophy, cosmology and experimental noise music.  

IMAGE Glen Hayward: Wish You Were Here City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi 2022. Photo Elias Rodriguez.

Don't miss an event or exhibition, sign up for our newsletter.

Focus on Photography is a collaboration between the National Library, City Gallery Wellington, and Adam Art Gallery, celebrating historic and contemporary photography in Aotearoa. Through a series of exhibitions and events, it highlights the medium’s ability to document, reflect, and transform the way we see the world.

The Ten Largest, 1907. Photograph courtesy of Moderna Museet, Stockholm

National Library of New Zealand 

City Gallery Wellington

Adam Art Gallery

Plan your visit

Focus on Photography

Exhibitions

Events

Don't miss an event or exhibition, 
sign up for our newsletter

IMAGE CREDITS

Bridget Reweti through the fog it came and the silence of the sea (for Sarah) 2023, pounamu plate negatives. Courtesy the artist.

Performance by Marlon Williams, with support from the Yarra Benders, at Bodega, Wellington, 25 June 2015. Photographer: Wendy Collings. ATL: PADL-001369 

Bridget Reweti Ōtāne 1 2021, stereoscopic photograph, inkjet print on archival paper. Courtesy the artist. 

John Feeney in Nubia, c. 1964. Photographer unknown (ATL ref. PAColl-9256-23)

Brit Bunkley, still from Transit, single channel video, 2025 

Bruce Connew, Heke’s Pah, 2018 

.  
 

#focusonphotographynz

Use the map to explore Focus on Photography across Pōneke. Plan your route and discover the many ways photography shapes how we see the world.