Learning from Venice

The Office for Contemporary Art Aotearoa (OCAA) is pleased to present Learning from Venice, a new professional development opportunity for eight early-career Aotearoa New Zealand artists, curators and writers, to take part in an intensive five-day research workshop at the Venice Biennale, between the 25th and 29th May 2026.

The programme will be led by respected curator, writer, editor and educator, Christina Barton, and Curator Contemporary Art at Te Papa, Hanahiva Rose. The participants of this inaugural programme are Melanie Tangere Baldwin, Sally McMath, Te Ara Minhinnick (supported by Naveya & Sloane) Luke Shaw (supported by Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury), Lachlan Taylor, p.Walters (supported by Elam Fine Arts, University of Auckland), Anto Yeldezian and Jingcheng Zhao. The participants were selected following an open call for applications, by a selection committee consisting of the programmes' co-leaders, Christina Barton and Hanahiva Rose, with artist, Judy Millar, and Kate Montgomery, Lead Practice Adviser – Visual arts, Craft and Object art at CNZ.

Timed to coincide with the 61st Biennale of Venice, Learning from Venice will take full advantage of the panoply of exhibitions staged across Venice, particularly the curated exhibition, In Minor Keys, and the vast array of national pavilions, including the NZ presentation of the solo exhibition, Taharaki Skyside by Dr Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, KātiMamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht) and the special collateral projects. This immersion in contemporary art will be consciously set within the context of the extraordinary historic city of Venice itself.

The first element of the programme will be an online hui in April, for all participants to hear from practitioners who have previously been a part of NZ at Venice. In late May, the workshop in Venice will consist of  readings, conversations, visits, and talks, and there will be opportunities to meet artists, curators and individuals involved in the Biennale’s realisation. Participants will collaborate to produce a publication reflecting on their findings, which will be published and distributed through a series of public talks, after the workshop concludes.

This initiative will enable this cohort of committed individuals to gain a sharper understanding of how the art world works in the context of one of its highest-profile occasions and share their thinking more widely on their return to Aotearoa. Participants will gain a stronger grasp of the key issues at stake in current practice, testing their reactions and impressions with peers, and learning together to catalyse future thinking about Aotearoa’s place in and contribution to the global art world.  

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About the participants

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Melanie Tangaere Baldwin is a mother,  artist, independent curator, and former director of HOEA! Gallery in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa.

Melanie’s practice is  grounded in Te Ao Māori and Mana Wāhine, drawing from whakapapa and pūrākau  to imagine a just and empowered future for her mokopuna. She is committed to  championing the art and voices of Indigenous, marginalised and less seen  people.

On the opportunity to join  Learning from Venice, Melanie says, “I want to see things I can't imagine,  and I want to be challenged and changed by the haerenga.”

Melanie’s work has been  included in recent exhibitions at Softshell (Te Tuhi Project Space), Te Whare o Rehua Sargeant Gallery, Dowse Art Museum, Blue Oyster, New Zealand Portrait Gallery, and Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi. She has curated projects for Objectspace, Tairāwhiti Museum, Tairāwhiti Arts Festival and HŌEA! Gallery, among others.

Sally McMath is a gallerist and researcher from Te Waiharakeke Blenheim. She is the founder and studio manager of 40 Anzac Studios and co-director of Treadler.

Sally prioritises working closely with artists in research, archive administration, and exhibition development as well as funding and project management, supporting their opportunities and capacity to make and exhibit work.

“The chance to engage in intensive research within the circumstances of the Biennale presents the perfect framework for considering how artists working in Aotearoa participate within global discourses,” says Sally. Learning from Venice will allow her to consider “how to make locally grounded exhibitions that are still challenging, relevant, and globally present.”

Te Ara Minhinnick is a Maaori artist descended from Ngaati Te Ata. Her practice engages the material whakapapa of whenua to unearth ancestral narratives. 

Minhinnick is based in Waiuku, between three significant waterways: Te Awa o Waikato, Te Maanukanuka o Hoturoa, and Te Tai o Rehua. The confiscated coastal sites of her rohe and materials collected from them - uku, whenua, onepuu - ground her practice.

“These materials carry whakapapa - legacies of confiscation, displacement, and interrupted knowledge transmission,” says Minhinnick. “Working with whenua means attending to what it holds and what it asks - obligations, relationships,protocols.” Learning from Venice is an opportunity to consider how these questions move across place, and to engage with the unique waterways of Venice.

Minhinnick has recently exhibited at Pātaka Art Gallery + Museum Porirua, City Gallery Wellington, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, SCAPE Public Art, Artspace Aotearoa and Season Aotearoa.

Te Ara's participation in Learning from Venice is supported by Naveya & Sloane.

Luke Shaw is an artist and musician based in Ōtautahi, Christchurch. Working primarily in sound, his work stretches across sculpture, moving image, installation and performance. Within his current research he is interested in the politics of communication and instances of listening and mishearing.

Shaw is a current doctoral candidate at Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, where he also lectures in Graphic Design. He is a facilitator at Paludal and chair of the Physics Room board of trustees. Shaw’s work has recently been exhibited at Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Ngutu Kākā Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, SCAPE Public Art, The Physics Room, Te Tuhi and RM Gallery.

Luke's participation in Learning from Venice is supported by Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury.

Lachlan Taylor is an art historian and writer, currently completing a PhD in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Lachlan’s doctoral research approaches the idea of the “global artist” as an art historical figure that emerges in the late twentieth century. “Arguably the most important structure in the development of this figure,” he says, “is the process of proliferating international art event exhibitions” such as the Venice Biennale.

Lachlan describes Learning from Venice as an opportunity to experience the Biennale as “a crucible where domestic and global(ised) conceptions of the artist, the nation, and the international are all thrown into complex, contested, but ultimately revealing dialogue.”

p.Walters is “a taniwha, local to the Kingdom of South Auckland and beyond, with wings and bones stretching across Aotearoa and to the islands of Tonga.” Their other monikers include p.A, Benny, The Doctor, and TSAPEXALTERNATIVECONCUBINE.

p.’s recent research has engaged with relationships and dissonances between language and the body. This work “honours and dishonours the bounds of my bones, the limits of my flesh,” they say, to explore knowledge and communication beyond the written word.  

p. is currently undertaking a Master of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. They were a 2025 Tautai Faleship artist in residence and 2022 recipient of the Te Waka Toi Ngā Manu Pīrere | Emerging Māori Artist Award. Their work has been exhibited at Tautai, Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, Robert Heald Gallery, HOEA!, and Artspace Aotearoa, among others. p. is also a member of artist collective The Killing.

p.'s participation in Learning from Venice is supported by Elam Fine Arts, University of Auckland.

Anto Yeldezian is a Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland based artist of Armenian heritage. His practice layers personal imagery with widely circulated media, art historical references, and motifs from popular culture to examine the construction of history and what he describes as the “burial of images” within others.  

Learning from Venice presents an opportunity to gain “an honest understanding of how my practice moves within - and sometimes resists - the structures that shape contemporary art locally and globally,” says Anto.

Anto holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland. He has exhibited at Laila Sydney, Coastal Signs, Sumer, Sanc Gallery, and Artspace Aotearoa.

Jingcheng Zhao is a curator and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She was the 2025 Artspace Aotearoa curatorial intern, where she delivered Parallax: reiterating forms of gathering a programme of artist residencies, workshops, and events. She was a 2024 Window Gallery Curator and has held roles at Satellites and Te Tuhi.

Jing describes her curatorial practice as inspired by questions of “how we organize artistic production, how we gather, share resources, and work together.” This collaborative approach will inform Jing’s participation in Learning from Venice, where she is “eager to encounter the Biennale directly: to learn what questions are being asked, what efforts are being made amid global turbulence, and how critical practice negotiates constraints with imagination.”

About the co-leaders

Christina Barton (DLitt, MNZM) is a respected curator, writer, editor and educator based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She researches and has taught the history of art in Aotearoa New Zealand and through her writing and curating she has sought to understand and articulate how artists navigate the complex internal and external forces that have shaped this culture, especially since the 1960s. In 2021 she was awarded an MNZM for her services to art history and curating, and in 2025, Out of the Blue, a collection of her essays on Aotearoa New Zealand artists was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery. She is currently Chair of CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image and a member of the Te Papa Board. As a key commentator on the visual arts in Aotearoa she has been a selector for the New Zealand pavilion at Venice on three occasions and has attended the Biennale a dozen times.

Hanahiva Rose is the curator of contemporary art at Te Papa and a doctoral candidate in art history at Victoria University. She has curated exhibitions at Te Papa, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and the National Library, among others. Hanahiva is widely published as a writer and art historian.