Day 1: Create & Challenge

Start your camp with creativity and team building at Capital E! First up, it’s exploring Virtual Reality in MediaLab. Next up, City Gallery WellingtonJoin the gallery educators for a Mural Tour and Screenprinting Workshop. Create a screenprint inspired by what you have seen incorporating kupu Māori.  

Day 2: Protest & Demonstrate

Start your day at Wellington Museum, which gives students the chance to connect the past, present, and future. In our Protest and Action programmestudents reflect on the driving factors behind social changeand contemporary issues. After lunch, it’s on to Capital E’s OnTV where your class will create their own TV show!

Day 3: Tour & Explore

Take the Cable Car up to Space Place, where your students will discover the collection of telescopes in a Telescope Tour. Eat a packed lunch in always beautiful Botanic Gardens.  Next up, Nairn Street CottageThe cottage is a 30 minute walk from Space Place. Here your students can explore Waves of Migrationwith a guided visit of the Wallis family home
LEARN MORELEARN MORELEARN MORE

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. 

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

Plan your visit

Focus on Photography

Events

Exhibitions

Events

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

Exhibitions

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 ConnewHeke’s Pah, 2018 

.  
 

Messengers

Location: City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi at National Library of New Zealand 

Dates: 16 August - 20 December 2025  

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

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.

Music looks that good

Location: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna
Matauranga o Aotearoa

Dates: On now until 30 June 2025

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Adrienne Martyn in conversation with Jess Clifford

Location: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery


Date: Wednesday 30 April
Time: 12pm

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Long exposure: Poetry in response to 'A Different Light'

Location: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery


Date: Wednesday 7 May 2025 
Time: 7.30pm

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

On Campus Exhibition: Capacity 

Location:  Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus , Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Dates: On now until 20 July 2025 

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

A Vocabulary, Bruce Connew

Location:  National Library of New Zealand Te Puna
Matauranga o Aotearoa

Dates: 16 August - 15 November 2025

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Long exposure: Poetry in response to 'A Different Light'

Location: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery


Date: Wednesday 7 May
Time: 6pm

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Site Seeing

Location:  City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi at National Library of New Zealand 

Dates: On now until 2 August 2025

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Shadow Play: Egypt Through the Lens of John Feeney

Location: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna
Matauranga o Aotearoa

Dates: On now until 2 August

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Long exposure: Poetry in response to 'A Different Light'

Location: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery


Date: Wednesday 7 May 2025 
Time: 6pm

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Long exposure: Poetry in response to 'A Different Light'

Location: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery


Date: Wednesday 7 May 2025 
Time: 7.30pm

Price: Free

LEARN MORE

Long exposure: Poetry in response to 'A Different Light'

Location: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery


Date: Wednesday 7 May
Time: 6pm

Price: Free

LEARN MORE