Enjoy is pleased to present I touch the surface, we draw wild beauty by Sena Park, and of forests and concrete by Matt Tini.

Previewing on Friday 30 January, from 5pm.

Sena Park’s practice explores the evolving relationship between human-designed environments and natural ecosystems, two poles held in particular tension within domestic gardens. Encompassing installation, expanded forms of painting, sculpture, photography and moving image, I touch the surface, we draw wild beauty reflects upon human endeavours to define or transform the wildness of nature in these private spaces. 

of forests and concrete is an exhibition of new work by Matt Tini developed from his ongoing research into harakeke as both resonant material and a ground for image-making. Using harakeke harvested from the whenua around Kuku as well as Pukeahu in inner-city Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Tini first processes the flax fibres to make paper, then uses extracts from the crushed plants to create a light-sensitive surface on which to expose photographic images.

Sena Park is a Korean-born New Zealand artist working across painting, mixed media, and installation. Her practice is grounded in analogue, labour-intensive processes and has recently expanded to include sensory media. 

Park’s work often begins with familiar subjects drawn from nature, architecture and cultural environments, which she reconfigures into non-functional and deliberately imperfect forms. Her nomadic studio life shapes the materials, forms and scale of her work. 

Park completed an MFA at the Elam School of Fine Art at Waipapa Taumata Rau the University of Auckland in 2015.

Matt Tini (Waikato, Ngaati Tiipa, Ngaati Mahuta, Ngāti Rākaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu)

Matt Tini is an artist and educator who works with photography, moving image, and native fibres. Deeply grounded in whakapapa, Māori cosmologies, and contemporary lived experiences, Tini’s practice considers what it means to be tangata whenua in relation with and through te taiao. These ever-shifting reflections influence Tini’s material and conceptual curiosities.