Plus 1

There’s an inherent challenge in bringing a plus-one to events. Whether it’s a wedding, party, or formal dinner, introducing someone to your personal or creative sphere can feel exciting, intimate, or awkward. Sometimes the plus-one blends in effortlessly; other times, they’re an amusingly misplaced puzzle piece. Either way, the choice often reveals more about the host than the guest—highlighting tastes, friendships, aspirations, or even quiet anxieties.

Plus 1 takes this social phenomenon and applies it to exhibition-making. Each gallery artist was invited to bring along someone else—another artist they admire, have long wanted to work with, or feel a creative connection to. Some pairings are surprising; others feel inevitable. The show explores dynamics between practices, revealing how different approaches, materials, and ideas can align—or usefully collide.

With 34 artists across 17 collaborative duos, Plus 1 is exuberant, overflowing, and joyfully messy. Expect surprising intersections, visual tension, and moments of both harmony and playful dissonance. One of the Dowse Art Museum’s curators, Milly Mitchell-Anyon, acts as the gallery’s own “plus-one,” ensuring cohesion while embracing delightful unruliness.

The contributions span a wide range of disciplines—from fashion to painting, ceramics to jewellery—and are united by shared interests such as language politics, personal histories, and reinterpretations of cultural imagery. Many artist relationships are grounded in friendship, mentorship, or mutual respect, underscoring the importance of community in creative life.

Several artists seized the opportunity for collaboration, something they had long aspired to. Claudia Kogachi and Emma Jing exemplify this approach in their joint work Opening Night. This painting merges fashion and fine art in a theatrical presentation framed by velvet curtains. It reflects their shared past as young ballerinas and their ongoing creative support for one another.

With a mutual interest in contemporary interpretations of the histories of their respective image reproduction processes, Caroline McQuarrie created a new collaborative artwork with printmaker Marci Tackett. Their screen- printed diptych, Poplar Tree in Winter, depicts a mature poplar tree photographed by McQuarrie on The Gullies farm during a 2023 residency. Referencing early photographic techniques and Fox Talbot’s iconic 1842–1843 photograph Oak Tree in Winter, the piece explores the complexity of landscape representation, identity, and colonial memory.

Long-time friends Rose Pickernell and Ruby Wilkinson present a collaborative painting created at Rose’s studio in Rotorua in late 2024. While Rose was refining her macramé and blasting Grime, Ruby was stretching canvases and mixing oil paints. Their resulting work, Proceed, was made using a printmaking technique. They celebrated the end of the studio week with double-strength Margaritas at the local bar alongside Rose’s 89-year-old granny. Accompanying the painting is a constructed steel stool, or plinth, An Ode To The Jump Ring, showcasing Rose’s metalsmithing skills and jewellery practice.

While many artists worked collaboratively, others are linked by longstanding affinities or ongoing artistic dialogues—having exhibited together, admired one another’s work from afar, or referenced each other in their practices.

Elisabeth Pointon has known Deborah Rundle for seven years, both socially and through exhibiting in
the same group shows. Over this time, their works have continued to appear in proximity—albeit inadvertently. Although their practices are not made in direct conversation, they organically complement each other due to a shared investment in the power of language and its capacity to critique political, social, and commercial systems. Both artists draw on historical contexts to challenge contemporary realities, explore alternative futures, and strive for collective understanding—offering, along the way, a sense of hope. Their works reflect practices that are sometimes playful,

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always interrogatory. Pointon’s decision to invite Rundle as her plus one can be seen as a declaration of admiration—for her work, and for her.

Kereama Taepa and Nikau Hindin’s pairing bridges traditional Māori artistry with contemporary methods. Taepa’s Unaunahi, a 3D printed polyamide work, engages directly with technological modernity, while Hindin’s Manu Wheiao, created with kōkōwai and ngārahu on aute, reconnects with ancestral materials and techniques. Their works interact to showcase the continuum of Māori visual culture, respecting the past while pushing into future possibilities.

Ann Shelton selected Kirsty Lillico because of her love of furnishing substrates, and the incredibly ambitious and sophisticated way she uses those surfaces in her sculptural artworks. Together they selected Shelton’s photograph Modern Girl, 1999, featuring retro furniture from her 1990s K Road apartment. Lillico responds to the photo in her new textile work I didn’t want beer because of the bubbles, made from commercial carpet, hand-tufted elements, and tapestry weaving.

A shared interest in psychological states and the emotive potential of everyday materials brings together Tyne Gordon and Sam Norton, both based in Ōtautahi. Their practices differ in form but align in their use of found and overlooked objects, reframing the familiar into something more theatrical or subliminal. A quiet synergy emerged when their works were shown in adjacent rooms during Spring Time is Heart Break at Christchurch Art Gallery. Shown side by side, this resonance takes on a new dimension.

Friendship, admiration, and shared sensibilities shape many of the collaborations in this exhibition. Jaime Jenkins invited jeweller Karl Fritsch after a casual collaboration on a ceramic ring box for a friend’s engagement— Fritsch’s handcrafted rings now line Jenkins’ studio shelves, each a small monument to scale and sentiment. Similarly, Caitlin Devoy and Nat Tozer painted portraits of each other that reveal a deep mutual respect for each other’s practice and process. Hannah Ireland and Reece King’s works bounce off one another with playful curiosity, resulting in a joyful visual exchange rooted in long-time friendship. Emotional resonance also links the works of Alan Ibell and Esther Deans, where Deans’ waxy surfaces echo the moody intimacy of Ibell’s The Conspirators.

Other pairings highlight complementary processes and shared conceptual ground. Emily Hartley-Skudder and Georgina May Young met during Hartley-Skudder’s Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 2023, and their works— spanning multimedia installation and naturally dyed textiles—speak to layered storytelling and material nuance. In the darkroom, Harry Culy and Michael Mahne Lamb offer contrasting photographic visions: one rooted in intuitive spontaneity, the other in technical control, showcasing the diverse possibilities of black-and-white analogue photography. Priscilla Rose Howe—whose work revels in villainy, and queer pleasure—joins Casey James Latimer in a shared love of symbolism and satire. Together they produce visually lush, mischievous works that fuse sharp narrative tension with carnivalesque audacity.

Mentorship and intergenerational dialogue also feature throughout the exhibition. Denys Watkins and Garth Steeper revisit a mentor-student dynamic grounded in expressive painterly traditions. Watkins’ watercolours, inspired by Indian crafts, enter into conversation with Steeper’s cinematic painting approach.

Recalling how vital early support was in her own career, Kāryn Taylor invited recent art graduate Madeline Hansen as her plus one, reflecting a commitment to fostering emerging talent. Hansen’s painting, Self-Portrait, sits playfully alongside one of Taylor’s more feminine pink ambient lightboxes with a seductive void.

Plus 1 thus becomes more than a collection of artistic partnerships—it is a layered exploration of relationships, material dialogues, and collaborative spirit, reflecting diverse engagements with friendship, memory, history, and the shared excitement of making art together.

Together, these pairings offer a snapshot of contemporary art as a social act: bold, responsive, and deeply invested in making space for oneself and others.