Featuring new and recent works by Sandra Bushby, Xin Cheng, Hikalu Clarke, Ruth Cleland, Eleanor Cooper, Henry Curchod, Tjalling de Vries, Miles Hendricks, Yolunda Hickman, Jesse Hogan, Cindy Huang, Matthew Galloway, Lara Merrett, Michael Morley, Martyn Reynolds, James Oram, Sam Rountree Williams, Huseyin Sami, Brontë Stolz, Ella Sutherland, Zina Swanson, Ava Trevella, Jan van der Ploeg, August Ward, and Anto Yeldezian.
Sumer is pleased to present Nova, the inaugural exhibition at its new location in Tāmaki Makaurau. The first exhibition offers a snapshot of the gallery program, both recent and forthcoming. An energetic bringing-together of work by multiple artists: some already associated with the gallery, while others will be names less familiar. And though the show has no prescriptive theme, it is a selection of work that possesses a radiance and newness suggested by the title. Nova has a deliberate focus upon presenting younger and lesser-known artists, with the understanding that the gallery, as the city’s newest addition, will be equally new to many.
From 2018 until the end of 2022, Sumer has operated from a gallery in Tauranga, wherein it presented an intergenerational program of some 40 exhibitions featuring artists from across New Zealand, Australia and further-afield. As the gallery’s ambitions and success grew, the need for a greater presence in Aotearoa’s largest city and cultural capital became clear. We are absolutely delighted to be in Tāmaki Makaurau, and to be opening our new doors to present our program to audiences here.
Now located at 27 Beach Road, Auckland Central—a short walk from Britomart Station—the new gallery melds new with old; sitting within in a 130- year-old storehouse which would have originally serviced the railyards and docks that once sat opposite. The gallery, a clean white cube, slots itself into a character building that is anything but, with its many angles and textures, and the eccentricities that one would expect from a building of its era. To the best of our ability, we have remained sympathetic to this heritage in positioning and building the gallery within its surrounds.
