Dunedin School of Art

07/09/2026

Exhibition on now.

Coming up. Faye Powell-Moore: Sacred, Invisible, Other. in the DSA Gallery.
EXHIBITION DATES : 7 - 11 September 2026
GALLERY HOURS: Mon - Thur 10am - 4pm
Fri* 12:30pm- 4pm -- *Closed Friday AM for exam
CLOSING EVENT: 5 - 7:00pm Friday 11 September

07/09/2026

This week's lunchtime seminar, Thursday 10 September, 12.00-1.00pm, P152.* A poster is also attached.

Joanna Osborne: An Illustrated Exhibition Talk: Documenting Spiral Collectives' 50th Anniversary Celebrations

Spanning the visual arts and literary fields, this talk is about an exhibition developed for Spiral Collectives’ 50th celebrations (1975-2025). Co-ordinated for Spiral by Joanna Osborne in collaboration with Marian Evans, the exhibition features 19 cherished artists and writers associated with Spiral, who lived sometime between 1929 and 2024 and whose lives and work are represented in Spiral’s anniversary publications, Spiral 8 and Some Stories— Jacquie (J.C.) Sturm, Renée, Arapera Blank, Gladys Gurney (Saj), Frances Cherry, Marilynn Webb, Heather McPherson, Keri Kaa, Rosemary Johnson, Pauline Neale, Miriama Evans, Joanna Margaret Paul, Juanita Ketchel, Irihapeti Ramsden, Keri Hulme, Sharon Alston, Hilary Baxter, Allie Eagle, Lynne Ciochetto. Versions of the exhibition have been hosted by the Charlotte Museum Te Whare Takatāpui-Wāhine o Aotearoa in Tāmaki Makaurau, St Gerard's Monastery (now secularised) in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Kā Kete Wānaka o Ōtepoti Dunedin Public Libraries for July-October 2026.

Joanna Osborne is an independent researcher in art history with interests in studies of religion and spirituality and women's art histories. She has a PhD from the University of Otago, and was the Dunedin Public Art Gallery 2020 Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Curatorial Intern. She has published on the work of Allie Eagle (1949–2022) and Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–2003), and researched early twentieth-century “spirit drawing” in Aotearoa New Zealand. Joanna is a current Spiral Collectives trustee (Spiral Collectives is a small, artist-led charity (CC62215): they educate, awhi & embrace, tautoko & support the practice & legacies of creative work by women & nonbinary people in Aotearoa New Zealand (https://www.spiralcollectives.org/).

*Lunchtime seminars can be accessed online via this link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/41438579971362?p=vzLFlNpaB3Ly9Bf7sR

06/09/2026

Hocken Collections Project | The exhibition, I te Kōrero was recently held at the Dunedin School of Art, where students created works in repsonse to art & ephemera held in the Hocken Library collections. DSA Students Hilary, Louie, Kristian & Teagan talk about their thoughtful & amazing creations ✨https://www.instagram.com/reels/Dc1aBVyGxBN/

31/08/2026

Coming up Labour Weekend: The Rekindle Resourceful Crafting Ōtepoti Tour. See Event and website for details.

31/08/2026

This week's Thursday Public Seminar is by Octavia Cook who reflects on her collaborative survey exhibition, Cook & Company, shown at Objectspace, Auckland in 2023.

Octavia Cook is jewellery lecturer at DSA. She studied jewellery under Pauline Bern at Unitec, Auckland, graduating in 1999, and was part of the jewellery cooperative, Workshop 6, in Kingsland. The early part of her career as a contemporary artist yielded an extensive body of work under the guise of a fictional lux jewellery brand, Cook & Co. By 2012 she had closed the firm and moved to Dunedin. She has continued to exhibit locally and internationally, is represented by Anna Miles Gallery in Auckland and has jewellery in private and institutional collections globally.

This seminar can also be accessed online. Please email Ed Hanfling for more information [email protected]

Dunedin School of Art Public Seminar: Octavia Cook, Cook & Company

30/08/2026

Coming up. Faye Powell-Moore: Sacred, Invisible, Other. in the DSA Gallery.
EXHIBITION DATES : 7 - 11 September 2026
GALLERY HOURS: Mon - Thur 10am - 4pm
Fri* 12:30pm- 4pm -- *Closed Friday AM for exam
CLOSING EVENT: 5 - 7:00pm Friday 11 September

28/08/2026

Congratulations to all the entrants from the Secondary Schools in the Dunedin School of Art CELEBRATE Exhibition and Awards.

Overall Winner: Emma Ong, Otago Girls High School
Runner Up: Pyper Greer, Taieri College

Please see the website for all the School Awards and commendations.

Congratulations to all the entrants from the Secondary Schools in the Dunedin School of Art CELEBRATE Exhibition and Awards.

25/08/2026

Congratulations to Mark Bridgmount, Sculptural Section Winner of the OUSA-run Art Week competition with his work Toga Party.
Mark Bridgmount currently studies at the Polytech, completing his Level 6 Diploma in Art and Design, specialising in ceramics. Mark worked as an optometrist in South D, and when he retired 3 years ago he figured he’d better find something to do. He promptly took up ceramics.

Art Week is back and better than ever. Walking through the Link-turned-art-gallery, Ōtepoti students’ talent was on clear display. The OUSA-run Art Week competition had five sections: photography, illustration, sculpture, painting, and

24/08/2026

This week's Public Seminar, Dunedin School of Art, Thursday 27 August 2026
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm , Dunedin School of Art, Lecture Theatre P152
19 Riego Street, Dunedin.

Sarah McGaughran – Facing Away: The Shifting Landscape of the Picturesque

Drawing on research undertaken as this year’s Dunedin Public Art Gallery Ihupukutaka Kairauhī Curatorial Intern, Sarah McGaughran employs the Claude glass as a metaphor to address inherited ways of looking and investigate the impact of the picturesque ideal on art making in Aotearoa. This seminar examines the shifting attitudes of New Zealand artists towards land representation from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day. These artists’ practices trace an evolution away from purely pictorial landscape depictions toward treating the land as a site of experience, relation, mythology and embodied knowledge, with an awareness of the histories and contexts surrounding place.

Sarah McGaughran is an Ōtepoti-based emerging curator, artist and writer. Currently serving as the 2026 Dunedin Public Art Gallery Ihupukutaka Kairauhī Curatorial Intern, they previously founded and directed the local artist-run initiative Slant Art Project Space. Their multidisciplinary practice is informed by a diverse academic foundation, holding a BVA with First Class Honours from Dunedin School of Art, a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Otago and a Certificate in Māori and Indigenous Art from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.

This seminar can also be accessed online. Please email Ed Hanfling for more information [email protected]

Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society Dunedin Public Art Gallery RDS Gallery

Image credit: Wayne Barrar, Twin tunnels, Manapouri Underground Power Station, New Zealand (2005). Colour pigment print. Collection of Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Gifted 2012 by the artist.

24/08/2026

Coming up around town: "Intertidal" Group Exhibition: Opening 4 September at Arc Brewery, Blue Skin Bay. Artists include Rowan Giselle, Manu Berry, Gary Pickford, Laire Purik and Vienna Spronken.