Day 9 – Auckland
Northward to Auckland, and Into the Stillness of Art
We left New Plymouth under an overcast sky, carrying breakfast in fragments rather than form — fruit, nuts, Up & Go drinks — choosing momentum over ritual. Even so, it was already close to 8.30 by the time we pulled away. The intention was clear: reach Auckland, and more specifically, the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
There were no scenic detours in the usual sense, but the road itself offered enough. A brief pause at an isolated black-sand beach — stark, elemental, fishermen casting lines into a restless sea — and then on again. At Piopio, we stopped only long enough to stretch our legs, aware of nearby limestone cliffs and film locations, but conscious of time. Waitomo, Raglan, Hamilton Gardens — all consciously passed over. Some trips are about addition; others are about restraint.
Lunch came at a service stop once the road widened toward Auckland — an unexpected but welcome return to familiar flavours at a small Indian eatery. It felt grounding, almost symbolic: after days of movement through land and history, we were nearing a city again.
By mid-afternoon, Auckland rose around us. We checked into the Barclay Suites, sixth floor, central and compact, the Sky Tower puncturing the skyline outside our window. Even from the bed, the city announced itself vertically. Across the street, the Shakespeare Hotel — tied to New Zealand’s oldest brewery — quietly reminded us that layers of history persist even in modern grids.
We didn’t linger. Bags dropped, car parked, we walked.
Entering Toi o Tāmaki
The Auckland Art Gallery is not a building you simply enter — it receives you. Light filters through the kauri-lined spaces; the architecture itself feels like a conversation between forest and city. Almost immediately, we encountered the work of Colin McCahon — his stark numeric and textual forms, often mistaken for simplicity, but charged with moral weight and spiritual urgency. His use of numbers, language, and blackened fields feels less like abstraction and more like instruction — teaching aids, almost — asking you not just to look, but to reckon.
But the heart of the visit lay upstairs.
Treasured Māori Portraits — Presence, Not Representation
The gallery named in honour of Apihai Te Kawau holds a gravity that is immediately felt. This is not a room of images; it is a room of presences.
The exhibition, Treasured Māori Portraits, unfolds within a Māori worldview — Te Ao Māori — where depictions of tūpuna (ancestors) are not aesthetic objects but carriers of mana (authority), tapu (sacredness), and mauri (life force). For centuries, these presences were embodied through whakairo (carving). With the arrival of painting and photography in the mid-19th century, new forms were adopted — not as replacements, but as continuations.
At the centre of this dialogue are the works of Gottfried Lindauer. Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Lindauer settled in Aotearoa and became one of the most significant portraitists of Māori leaders at the turn of the century. What strikes you is not technique alone, but stance. His portraits do not diminish or exoticise. They meet their subjects eye to eye. They acknowledge rangatiratanga — self-determination — through stillness and respect.
These works were not merely commissioned by Europeans; they were sought by Māori communities themselves. They travelled across iwi and hapū, radiating outward from Auckland, echoing the role once held by ancestral carvings within meeting houses. In this gallery, they feel less like a collection and more like a gathering.
Opposite one wall hangs a portrait of Te Hira Te Kawau, son of Apihai Te Kawau — a quiet but powerful reminder that this naming is not symbolic but genealogical. The room holds whakapapa not as a concept, but as a presence you stand within.
The exhibition’s framing — Ngā Taonga Tūturu (many treasures; that which is enduring and true) — is not rhetorical. It invites you to consider permanence differently: not as material longevity, but as cultural continuity.
We stayed longer than planned. Some rooms do that to you.
Beyond this, the gallery opened into other worlds — modernist works, impressionist gestures, evolving dialogues — but that came later. For now, the day had already shifted from transit to contemplation.
And it was not finished yet.
Modernism, Memory, and a City That Comes Alive at Dusk
We entered the Modernist galleries from the “wrong” end — though in retrospect, that felt fitting. Modernism often rewards disorientation before coherence.
What immediately struck us was the depth of the collection. This was not a token sampling but a confident, international conversation. The modern European canon was strongly present: works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne anchor the space, tracing the shift from representation to structure, colour, and psychological form. There were also impressionist works — including paintings attributed to Claude Monet — where light, rather than line, becomes the organising principle.
This remarkable collection exists largely thanks to the bequest of Lucy Carrington Wertheim and, most significantly, the Robertson Gift. Julian Robertson and his wife Josie donated a world-class collection to the gallery in the early 2000s, transforming Auckland Art Gallery into the strongest holder of modern European art in the southern hemisphere. Standing in that room, it is hard not to feel the quiet confidence of a city that knows it belongs in a global cultural dialogue.
Contemporary Voices: Personal, Playful, Political
From there, the tone shifted — not away from seriousness, but towards intimacy.
The temporary exhibition One and Others by Louise Bourgeois was deeply affecting. Bourgeois’ work is never abstract for abstraction’s sake; it is autobiographical, psychological, and fiercely honest. The accompanying film contextualised her sculptures and installations as fragments of memory — childhood, trauma, relationships — rendered in material form. The title itself speaks volumes: identity as something formed with and against others.
Nearby, a participatory installation by Do Ho Suh (using soft, malleable materials reminiscent of Play-Doh) invited visitors — especially children — to contribute. It was playful on the surface, but conceptually serious: a growing, communal work that dissolves the boundary between artist and audience. We didn’t add to it, but watching it evolve felt quietly hopeful.
Grounded in Aotearoa: Land, River, Ancestry
The shift into Māori and Pacific contemporary art felt neither abrupt nor tokenistic — it felt necessary.
One work, in particular, held us: Wastelands (2024) by Brett Graham. Created for the Venice Biennale, the sculpture is an exploration of the Waikato River as a tūpuna — an ancestor — rather than a resource. Graham draws on the history of land confiscation, wetland drainage, and environmental degradation, placing customary Māori relationships to land and water at the centre of the work.
What made the piece even more resonant was its intergenerational dialogue. It responds to works made in the 1970s by his father, also an artist, displayed nearby. Time folds in on itself here: past and present, parent and child, river and people — all speaking at once.
By the time we emerged from the galleries, the rain had returned in earnest. We lingered longer than planned. I bought a beautifully produced book of Gottfried Lindauer’s Māori portraits — an anchor, a way of carrying that earlier stillness forward. Some souvenirs are decorative; others are commitments to remember.
Evening: Light, Water, and the City’s Pulse
We returned to the apartment briefly, then headed out again as evening softened the city.
At Wynyard Quarter, the Silo Park night markets were in full rhythm — food stalls, music, laughter, movement. I flew the drone over the harbour, capturing the Sky Tower glowing against the water, yachts idling like floating constellations.
The bascule bridge lifted and settled, boats passed through, and then — almost as if on cue — the full moon rose. Large, unhurried. The kind of moon that doesn’t need commentary.
People swam, jumped, gathered. The city felt open rather than impressive, lived-in rather than staged.
Later that night, back at Barclay Suites, I booked the Island Gateway cruise for the following day. Not the ideal time slot, but sometimes travel teaches you to work with what’s available rather than what you planned.
It had been a full day — intellectually rich, visually dense, emotionally balanced.
Auckland had revealed itself not through spectacle, but through layers.
Tomorrow, the road would turn north again — towards the Bay of Islands.
