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.

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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

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IMAGE CREDITS

Charles Spencer, Eruption from Te Hape o Toroa hill looking north-east, 1886, cyanotype, 407 × 508 mm, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, PH-ALB-208-p43-1. 

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

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

Wesley John Fourie: HYPERBALLAD, City Gallery Wellington in Partnership with Wellington City Council, 2025. Photo: Chantell Gribbon.

Henry Wright, Māori woman in a tag cloak [possibly Rīpeka Te Puni] and Amy Elizabeth Wright at Te Karaka kāinga, Karaka Bay, Wellington, c. 1885, full-plate gelatin silver glass negative, 65 × 216 mm, Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/1-020509-G.

Robina Nicol, Amy Kirk yawning, wearing a black armband, c. 1899, quarterplate gelatin silver glass negative (83 × 109 mm) Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/4-121464-G.

William Temple (attributed), Lieutenant Henry Stratton Bates of the 65th Regiment [left] and Poihipi Tukairangi of Ngāti Tūwharetoa [right] with an unidentified Māori man and child, photographed at Rangiriri, c. 1862, albumen silver print (73 x 162 mm). Alexander Turnbull Library, Urquhart album, PAI-q-250-31.]

Henry Wright, Captain William Shilling (back, kneeling); Kereopa Tukumaru (centre); Rīpeka Te Puni with her arm around the photographer’s daughter, Amy Elizabeth Wright; and Rīpeka’s brothers Nopera and Atanatiu, photographed at Karaka Bay, Wellington, c. 1885, gelatin silver glass plate negative (165 × 216 mm) Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/1-020634-G.

John Kinder, Wiremu Tāmihana. William Thompson the kingmaker. New Zealand.  1863, albumen silver print mounted on album page (107 x 78 mm), Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, PH-ALB-S10-p4.

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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.