Under the Pasture

In Under the Pasture, George Turner presents new work centred on old concerns. Underpinning the installation Out of the Scene, into the Fever (2025) are themes of nationhood, colonial control, identity, and decay. In this work, Turner warps the New Zealand flag almost beyond recognition. Using bright yellow beeswax, the artist moulded hundreds of mushroom-shaped candles, which are pressed into the gallery’s floor in the shape of our flag. Looking down at this orderly formation of fungi—so unlike that of their wild counterparts—we are prompted to question if this emblem represents who New Zealanders are today, in the 256 years since Māori and Pākehā were introduced. The moving image work Refugia.exe (2025), shown in the screening room, comprises a looped, digital ecology that has been rendered in 3D using data points gathered from location-based photographs, photogrammetry, motion capture, and mapping tools. Centred on an Aotearoa wetland, its own living refugia of ancestral memory, the work unfolds like a speculative petri dish. The story Turner is telling is constantly morphing, shifting depending on where one looks, when one enters, and what one brings with them. The land we live on tells its own story, if only we are willing to listen.