My Work

With over 20 years of experience, I have curated and coordinated hundreds of exhibitions, installations, and commissions across an extensive range of environments—including corporate spaces, galleries, museums, libraries, theatres, educational institutions, hospitality and retail settings, private clubs, banks, courts, hospitals, and more. My portfolio spans site-specific works, multi-venue installations, billboard and poster campaigns, education and outreach programmes, and national and international touring exhibitions. I’ve delivered projects for festivals, awards, and project space programmes, bringing strategic, story-led curation to spaces that connect with diverse audiences and communities.

Lyn Plummer, Modulations: Cantata Reconfigured

Modulations: Cantata Re Configured was a series of evolving, site-responsive multimedia installations by artist Lyn Plummer toured across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia (in my capacity as Manager/Curator of the Ashburton Public Art Gallery and tour partner). The project was conceived as a conceptual pilgrimage, inviting both artist and viewer to engage with shifts in space, meaning, and materiality over time and across multiple venues.

Each installation was reconfigured by Plummer for the unique character and scale of its host gallery, incorporating new works and adjusting lighting, sound, and spatial composition to reflect the physical and theoretical concerns of the site. Through this continuous modulation, the project explored themes of ritual, memory, and voice—drawing on ecclesiastical symbolism, vernacular craft practices, and silent or marginalised narratives.

Installations included sculptural and two-dimensional works made from mixed media: Perspex, textiles, glass beads, paint, ash, and salt. Original soundtracks accompanied each exhibition, reinforcing the metaphor of the cantata as a structure of layered, performative voice.

The series encouraged strong public engagement and cross-disciplinary use of space, with participation from schools, creative writing groups, fashion educators, and textile communities. Educational components included illustrated lectures and floor talks tailored to diverse audiences—from high school students to general visitors—exploring the artist’s background, research, and creative development. These engagements deepened understanding of the artworks and promoted broader dialogue around cultural production, identity, and authorship.

Lyn Plummer is an Australian visual artist whose career spans exhibitions across Papua New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand. Known for her conceptually rich and materially layered installation works, Lyn’s practice explores themes of ritual, memory, and cultural storytelling.

Lyn Plummer - Homepage

David Elliot & Margaret Mahy, The Making of the Word Witch

The Making of the Word Witch: The Poetic & Illustrative Magic of Margaret Mahy & David Elliot was curated and toured to venues across Aotearoa New Zealand. The Word Witch celebrated the extraordinary creative partnership between two of New Zealand’s most cherished storytellers—Margaret Mahy, internationally acclaimed author and poet, and David Elliot, award-winning illustrator and writer.

The exhibition featured nearly 100 original drawings by Elliot, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at the interactive and iterative process of illustration. From initial sketches to final artworks, visitors could trace the development of The Word Witch, a collection of Mahy’s poems, curated by Tessa Duder, and brought vividly to life through Elliot’s dynamic and imaginative visual interpretations.

Alongside Elliot’s illustrations, the exhibition also featured a selection of personal objects loaned by Margaret Mahy, including a handwritten book Mahy created as a child, titled Harry is Bad, and a fully illustrated Aranukan Lute Book she wrote as a teenager, offering early glimpses into her lifelong dedication to language, storytelling, and imagination.

Through these artefacts and illustrations, The Word Witch explored the creative dialogue between word and image, revealing how Elliot’s illustrations do not just accompany Mahy’s poetry, they expand, illuminate, and enrich it.

Designed to captivate audiences of all ages, this exhibition was a tribute to the poetic genius of Margaret Mahy, the illustrative magic of David Elliot, and the transformative power of stories. It invited visitors into a world where pictures and poems speak to one another, and to us—with wonder, warmth, and wit.

David Elliot is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated children's book illustrators and authors. Born in Ashburton and now based in Port Chalmers, he has built a distinguished international career marked by creative versatility and richly imaginative work. Before becoming a full-time illustrator in 1998, David held a range of roles, from zoo gatekeeper to Antarctic dishwasher, each adding depth to the narrative worlds he brings to life.

The Flying Whale - Art of David Elliot

Collection of Kevin Downie, Soled Out

Laced with personal history and cultural resonance, Soled Out was an immersive exhibition that stepped inside the extraordinary private collection of Kevin Downie, self-confessed ‘Casual’, fashion industry insider, and lifelong sneaker aficionado. Presented at Classic Motorcycle Mecca, the exhibition showcased over 100 pairs of rare, limited-edition, and impeccably preserved kicks, just a fraction of what Downie claims is “without doubt” the largest sneaker collection in Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Kev, aka, Duckyutility has an incredible sneaker collection, eclectic and large in number. What I found really interesting were Kev’s 80s/90s UK football match stories highlighting some of the most iconic sneaker NB silhouettes ever to drop”

— Che Fu

“Kevin’s sneaker collection is a true gem. Steeped in tradition, memories and personal stories, I haven’t seen a collection like it in the Southern Hemisphere. The beauty of it, is that it is a true reflection of Kevin himself. Full of odd ball, limited and incredibly exclusive kicks, it’s depth is it’s marvel. Two words - jaw dropping”

— Philip Bell/DJ Sir-Vere/O.N.Z.M.

Soled Out extended far beyond sneakers. The exhibition also featured a curated selection of limited-edition streetwear and collectible artefacts, further reflecting Downie’s immersion in global subcultures. These additions layered the exhibition with commentary on branding, collecting, and the global sneaker and streetwear phenomenon, offering visitors insight into how identity is constructed through objects and aesthetics.

More than just a display of pristine kicks, Soled Out offered insight into the international sneaker and streetwear scene through a uniquely local lens, celebrating the distinctive stories that bind identity, travel, fashion, and football subcultures. Through Downie’s reflections, visitors encountered a deeply personal form of collecting, where each sole carried the imprint of place, time, and feeling.

Soled Out did not just celebrate sneakers. It celebrated the people who wear them, the culture that surrounds them, and the stories they carry forward with every step. Soled Out was not just an exhibition—it was a community conversation. Numerous school groups visited throughout the show’s run, engaging directly with Kevin Downie’s personal stories and his behind-the-scenes insights from a 25-year career in fashion and sneaker design. These sessions offered young people a rare opportunity to connect creativity with career, fashion and storytelling.

A major highlight of the exhibition’s outreach was the Sneaker Design Competition, which attracted close to 700 entries from across the region. The overwhelming response spoke to the exhibition’s reach and its ability to spark imagination and connection across generations. The competition celebrated not only design talent but the cultural power of foot and street wear to tell stories, inspire identity, and reflect change.

Collector of 700 pairs just does it | Otago Daily Times Online News

John Wishart, Abandoned Works

John Wishart is an Invercargill-based sculptor whose work transforms found and discarded materials into poetic reflections on place, memory, and time. Abandoned Works, a major solo exhibition of his sculptural practice, was presented at the Southern Institute of Technology and subsequently toured to the Ashburton Public Art Gallery. The exhibition and its tour were coordinated following years of conversations with the artist about industrial heritage, transformation, and the ocean as both site and agent of change.

Abandoned Works draws upon materials salvaged from the shoreline below the Ocean Beach Freezing Works (1892–1991)—a once-thriving industrial site and the first in New Zealand to employ women (in the 1970s). The closure of the Works in 1991, which led to the loss of 1,450 jobs, left behind a landscape of detritus and memory. Historian Dr Michael Stevens notes that “The Beach,” as it was colloquially known, attracted “hard personalities to do dirty work.”1

In this body of work, Wishart collects and reimagines industrial debris, transforming it into sculptural forms that blur the line between natural erosion and human abandonment. His rusted, broken fragments, embedded with sand, salt, and shells—serve as relics of a slow metamorphosis, preserving a fleeting moment in an endless cycle of decay and renewal. The title Abandoned Works alludes both to the derelict freezing works and to the idea that no artwork is ever truly finished, only abandoned.

As Wishart writes:

"The beach at the foot of its ramparts is strewn with the detritus of past lives... Along with the residua of shells, carapace and kelp lie the artifacts of occupation – bleached buoys, concrete slabs rounded, bouldered, ribs still showing, bottles beaded and blasted, transformed into objects of an uncertain provenance, an uncertain beauty. It has been my joy as a sculptor to cast these objects, or at least their simulacra, and the spirit residing in them onto our urban shores in the hope that they may re-occupy our own barren and abandoned places."

Through his sculptural work, John Wishart offers a compelling meditation on the interplay between industry and nature, permanence and erosion, presence and absence—bringing fragments of the past into the present to be seen, considered, and remembered.

Wishart completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture at Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 1996, and later undertook postgraduate studies at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, where he worked under renowned artists Selwyn Muru and Brett Graham. His practice reflects a longstanding engagement with Southland’s histories, both personal and collective, and with materials that bear the marks of time and abandonment.

1. Stevens, Michael. NZ Museums, Text for photograph Ocean Beach Slaughter-men and Labourers, 1921, unknown photographer. Supplied by the Bluff Maritime Museum. Retrieved from https://www.nzmuseums.co.nz/collections/3234/objects/936488/photograph-ocean-beach-slaughtermen-and-labourers