Beyond Boundaries
Chris Cunningham | Helen Manning | Angela Tier
13 NOV 2025 - 24 JAN 2026
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Three local Whanganui women artists, a painter, an installation artist and ceramicist have come together to present you with an exhibition that delves into relationships, seabirds and environmental tensions.
In the floor installation inspired by the material vocabulary of Eva Hesse and with a nod to her work Repetition III, Helen Manning has created Secondary. Using a 50-year-old domestic sewing machine, she has pushed it to its limits, building a thread mesh that holds both tension and collapse. This delicate balance also draws us to think about the relationship we have with our natural world. This slow, repetitive process becomes a way of drawing in space, creating individual circles of thread which connect to each other in a hit or miss way. Humankind can be viewed as weaving and threading our way through life, creating chaos, patterns, marks and trails. Manning works with feminine tools, unseen work, soft materials, giving form to quiet tactile labour. This is a practice of holding space — for vulnerability, for impermanence, for the peripheral. The temporary life of these sculptures will be reflected in the shifting, collapsing nature of the material over the duration of this exhibition. 
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Chris Cunningham’s figurative paintings speak to us gently, through the mind of seabirds. A wishbone for hope or a moon for harmony, she describes her paintings as ‘a collection of seabirds which celebrates their majesty, their place in our southern seas and their connection to the skies.’ Her gold frames symbolize the preciousness of the moment. A gift of nature. She has captured the birds’ soaring freedom and emotional bonds, through their loyalty and wonderment. Seabirds are deeply entwined with the elements, their flight and cries are responsive to the wind and ocean. Sometimes this is a challenge, sometimes a harmonious dance. Her paintings remind us that seabirds symbolize freedom and grace, aspiration and the power to overcome. Simply awesome birds.
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Angela Tier’s ceramics talk to us about our relationships through anthropomorphic seabirds and she wants to highlight hope as key to the uncertainty surrounding our relationships. After seeing the David Attenborough recent documentary Ocean, she was moved by his message of hope in the face of more challenging scenes where humans have destroyed coral reefs, hunted sea animals to near extinction and the sad reality of bycatch from fishing vessels. The message of hope is the light in the darkest hour, and with the recent passing of Jane Goodall, the message is in the forefront of our minds. In Our Hands Holds the Future, two anthropomorphic birds sit across from each other; one with a single egg, a chance for life to go on and her partner bird, with hands clasped in hope. The power lies not with them, but with an understanding that we are all a part of the outcome. Our actions affect life as we know it, now and in the future.
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Together, the works in Beyond Boundaries offer a thought-provoking conversation about balance, vulnerability, and the capability for renewal. We encourage reflection, on how we inhabit and impact the world, as individuals, as communities, and as part of a shared ecosystem. This exhibition reminds us of nature’s resilience and a call to nurture the fragile threads that connect us all. There is hope for a better future.
2051: Predator Free Aotearoa
1 Aug - 26 Oct 2024
Angela Tier Pest Bombs Stoneware 2023
Angela Tier Elixir Flask Stoneware 2023
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In New Zealand we have four species of rats. First came the Kiore with Polynesian explorers and once was widespread across Aotearoa before European settlement and is now confined to Fiordland and many offshore islands. The Norway Rat was introduced in the 18th century and is common in wet habitats, urban areas and offshore islands.
The Ship rat is widespread throughout New Zealand after being introduced in the North Island in 1860s and South island in the 1890s, this rat has thrived here and continues to be an ongoing problem, especially when it comes to managing our native species population and protecting them from declining numbers and extinction. Lastly, we have the common house mouse also a problem for our native species. |
Angela Tier Elixir Flask Stoneware 2023
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On Netflix they aired a series called Unnatural Selection. If you watch Episode Three “Changing the Entire Species” you will meet a scientist from United States offering a gene edited solution to our rat problem in Aotearoa to help with our Predator Free 2050 target; a policy which was declared by Prime Minister John Key. Gene editing rats is considered by many as unnatural, it is untested in the wild environment, it seems risky, and it is likely to work by eliminating rats from our country in the short term, but how are we going to meticulously monitor and manage non GM rats coming in on ships and planes for a re-infestation? Rats may not be wanted here, but in other environments they are needed, they are important to the health of the grasslands and forests, being pollinators and a major source of food for predators. What if our GM rats escape on boats and planes and cause the beginning of the end for Rattus Rattus worldwide?
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Angela Tier Bad Science Installation Gordons Bush Okoia 2024
So how do the youth feel about traditional methods of predator control and possible future technologies? A research thesis by Lucy Dickie from the Otago University was completed in 2017 asking people aged 18 – 24 years what their views are of Predator Free 2050. The results summed up showed the following common views: “Traditional forms of control such as traps and bait stations were viewed positively, in contrast to aerial drops of poison, which was viewed negatively. Respondents seemed open to the potential use of gene drive as a predator control method. Throughout the survey, concern was expressed for the welfare of the targeted animals, which may have contributed to the support for gene drive.”
It seems likely that the youth will endorse the gene drive option in time to come if predator control efforts start to wane from the PF2050 goal. As you enter the gallery space you are confronted by an installation of one hundred ceramic rats by local artist Angela Tier. The rats are curiously attracted to a rat king specimen, a widely debated phenomena with theories that argue it is naturally occurring to a cruel man made form of pest control. This appears to be a science experiment that questions morality, a mad radical determination to achieve the 2050 Predator Free target. What lengths will we go to reach this goal as a nation? What risks are we willing to take? Are we opening Pandora's box by releasing gene edited rats into our environment? Are we about to cause a catastrophic event with unmanageable consequences? These are the questions posed by Angela Tier with her plague of toxic yellow rats.
It seems likely that the youth will endorse the gene drive option in time to come if predator control efforts start to wane from the PF2050 goal. As you enter the gallery space you are confronted by an installation of one hundred ceramic rats by local artist Angela Tier. The rats are curiously attracted to a rat king specimen, a widely debated phenomena with theories that argue it is naturally occurring to a cruel man made form of pest control. This appears to be a science experiment that questions morality, a mad radical determination to achieve the 2050 Predator Free target. What lengths will we go to reach this goal as a nation? What risks are we willing to take? Are we opening Pandora's box by releasing gene edited rats into our environment? Are we about to cause a catastrophic event with unmanageable consequences? These are the questions posed by Angela Tier with her plague of toxic yellow rats.
Sarah Urwin Specimens Stoneware 2024
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Award winning artist Sarah Urwin has created a glorious trap tower with an array of native birds, it is a lure, a temptation for pests, it entices with the promise of a feast but at the same time it could collapse onto a predator with one little movement. A precariously balanced tower that reflects the delicate balance of our eco system. Here we see the birds ban together to fight for their survival with "no.8 wire" ingenuity and desperation to save their species with a steeple of sacrifice! Sarah Describes her work as "A rambling, ramshackle structure, Specimens plays with dualities and contradictions. The black and white shades evoke the silver gelatin photography of the Victorian era, and the boxes remind us of specimen cases. But the edifice is thrown into chaos. Native species are categorized and compartmentalized, but also stacked and jumbled. The structure is massive and strong, but also precarious and threatening to fall. These dualities gesture towards the dualities of humans' relationships with our natural heritage: both a predator and a protector, both consigned to history and also holding hope for a different future."
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Sarah K Matthew Kokako Digital Collage Print 2023
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Sarah K Matthew Kaka Beaks Digital Collage Print 2023
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Sarah K Matthew Of Gorse Digital Collage Print 2023
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Sarah Matthew is inspired by the design of the Bauhaus as well as by English textile designer William Morris. Sarah has worked towards the Predator Free 2050 goal by living and working on Aotea/Great Barrier Island and Raoul Island managing pests and monitoring native species. Sarah describes her prints as a collage, creating meaning through appropriation and a combination of found imagery, forming dialogue and expressing ideas that become coherent when viewed as a collection. She uses this method of collecting imagery to create a superficial sense of familiarity and the use of commercial production to create these prints is a nod to post-modernism and our indulgence to consumerism. These prints highlight the impact of colonialism on our natural environment, for example using Gorse as a symbol for both this damage and regret. “From Extinction to Icon” is a collection of prints that speak about the value we place on our environment and how it can be dictated by fashions, which can have a destructive impact on our natural world. The common outlook here is that whatever we humans do, we make the biggest impact or difference with our actions. Understanding the consequences of our actions ensures that we think ahead for generations to come.
