UTOPIA GALLERY

Open Hours
Wed - Sat
10am -4pm
or by Arrangement

 STRANGE RELATIONSHIPS    9 APRIL - 20 JUNE 2026

A Group Exhibition:
Tom Turner | Tess Charles | Eva Harkness | Sarah Urwin | Debbie Biggar | Lucy Hunter

The Autumn group exhibition at Utopia this month catches you first with a sideways glance, drawing you into a space where beauty and unease sit side by side. Upon entering, viewers encounter the death and decadence of taxidermist Debbie Biggar, shown alongside Eva Harkness’s cast bronze native flowers of the underworld, Te puia o Te Reinga, Sarah Urwin’s clay self-portraits made deliberately in unsexy poses, and Tom Turner’s crocheted bombs and grenades, these objects of violence rendered through soft, domestic labour translating instruments of warfare into vulnerable objects. 
Beyond the deep purple wall in the front gallery, more of Turner’s quietly confronting military works emerge: a soft crocheted tank advances towards the viewer, a drone hovering not far behind. The relevant connection to what is happening globally is immediate and unsettling. On the south wall, Tess Charles presents a concertina-style photographic series mapping her 28-day cycle, offering an intimate insight into the hormonal shifts that shape the lived experiences of many women and their relationships.
Opposite, three paintings by Dunedin artist Lucy Hunter hang like fragments of a myth. A storyteller in paint, Hunter conjures imaginative creatures on a journey with circling themes, an encounter, imminent death, and resurrection around a campfire. The works feel ancient, playful, and strangely familiar, as though drawn from a half-remembered dream. The longer you spend with these works, the more their relationships begin to shift and unravel, with connections emerging where none first seemed to exist, leaving a lingering sense that something you are viewing will still be unfolding in your mind after you leave the gallery space.
Policy for exhibiting at UTOPIA
UTOPIA STUDIO GALLERY