Dr Sandy Adsett

Dr Sandy Adsett (Ngāti Pahauwera) is an acclaimed New Zealand artist, a painter, carver, and weaver whose career has also included costume and stage design. Influential as a teacher, he has trained and inspired many of Aotearoa’s most celebrated artists. Born and raised in Raupunga, he attended Te Aute Boy’s College in Hawke’s Bay; in the 1960s he became an arts specialist for the Department of Education, helping to introduce the new Māori Arts in Schools programme. In 2005 he received the Order of New Zealand for Service to Art, and he was made adjunct professor for his contribution to art education and the Māori community by Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. In 2006 he received his Master of Māori Visual Arts with First Class Honours from Massey University; this was followed in 2014 with Massey University awarding him an honorary doctorate.  

Brett Graham

Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Tainui) is a sculptor who creates large scale artworks and installations that explore indigenous histories, politics and philosophies. Graham lives and works in Waiuku on the southern shore of Manukau Harbour (Auckland, New Zealand), though has been a constant traveller through his career, undertaking residences through Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (the Pacific), North America and Europe. He conceives his Māori whakapapa (ancestry) as a Pasifika/Moana identity and affiliated with a global network of indigenous and non-Western peoples. It is from this basis that Graham's work engages with histories of imperialism and global indigenous issues. Text credit: Anna Marie White. 

Frederick John Graham (1928-2025)

Frederick John Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura/Tainui) was a central figure in the emergence of contemporary Māori art from the early 1960s. His work has dealt with controversial Māori land loss, although Māori traditions and pūrākau were themes at the heart of his extensive practice.

A renowned carver and sculptor, Graham combined traditional wood and stone with modern materials. His work has been exhibited and sold to collectors both in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world. Graham received an ONZM for services to Māori art in 2018 and in the same year became an Arts Foundation Icon, of whom there are only 20 at any given time.

Selwyn Te Ngareatua Wilson (1927-2002)

Considered one of the founding figures of Māori modernism, Selwyn Wilson (Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Hine) enrolled at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, in 1945, becoming the first Māori graduate from a New Zealand art school. By 1951 the paintings from his diploma had been exhibited at the National Art Gallery in Wellington. In a hiatus from art school, he and transferred to Auckland Teacher’s Training college, later teaching art to inmates at Mt Eden prison. Wilson was entirely dedicated to the transformational power of art on disaffected youth. Two of his earliest figurative paintings were acquired by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 1948 and 1950 also making them the first works by a contemporary Māori artist to be acquired by a public gallery in New Zealand.

Mataaho Collective

Established 2012, Mataaho Collective is four Māori women who create large-scale installations with a single authorship. They are Arts Foundation laureates and won the Walters Art Prize in 2021. Living around Aotearoa New Zealand, Mataaho is composed of:  

• Erena Baker Arapere (Te Atiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangātira) a Senior Lecturer in Māori Visual Arts at Toioho ki Apiti, Massey University Palmerston North.  

• Sarah Hudson (Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Pūkeko) Whakatāne-based artist and co-founder of Kauae Raro Research Collective. 
• Bridget Reweti (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi) artist, curator, writer and co-editor of ATE Journal of Māori art.  
• Dr. Terri Te Tau (Rangitāne ki Wairarapa) is an artist and award-winning science fiction author based in the Manawatū.