Steph Arrowsmith, The Day is Waiting For You
Current exhibition
Overview
Steph Arrowsmith paints like someone trying to hold light in their hands. She works pigment into silk, cotton, and canvas—not laying it on, but pushing it through—until the surface seems to glow from behind. The images that emerge feel half-remembered: seals mid-performance, a red star caught in freefall, a sad sun sinking into carpet. Scenes that hover between sincerity and set design, between childhood memory and dream.
In this series of five new works, Arrowsmith conjures a spectre of a benevolent world—one that feels increasingly make-believe. Her too-pure forms drift through murky enclosures dressed up as paradise. The sun, if it appears, clangs its symbols across a sky too bright to believe. These are idealisations of the natural world, captured and framed to soothe a deeper, more persistent longing: for innocence, for beauty, for something gentler than what we’re given.
Steph graduated from Toi Rauwhārangi, Massey University College of Creative Arts in 2021 and lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. Recent Exhibitions include ‘You’ve been here before, Bitch!’, ‘How to Glow Up?’, ‘On the Topic Of Milestones’, ‘ :- ( :- ( :- ( :- ( ‘, ‘Smaller Woman Eating A Big Apple’, ‘A Very Brave Choice’ with Millie Dunstall at RM Gallery + Project Space and ‘New Paintings’ at Sully’s.
In this series of five new works, Arrowsmith conjures a spectre of a benevolent world—one that feels increasingly make-believe. Her too-pure forms drift through murky enclosures dressed up as paradise. The sun, if it appears, clangs its symbols across a sky too bright to believe. These are idealisations of the natural world, captured and framed to soothe a deeper, more persistent longing: for innocence, for beauty, for something gentler than what we’re given.
Steph graduated from Toi Rauwhārangi, Massey University College of Creative Arts in 2021 and lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. Recent Exhibitions include ‘You’ve been here before, Bitch!’, ‘How to Glow Up?’, ‘On the Topic Of Milestones’, ‘ :- ( :- ( :- ( :- ( ‘, ‘Smaller Woman Eating A Big Apple’, ‘A Very Brave Choice’ with Millie Dunstall at RM Gallery + Project Space and ‘New Paintings’ at Sully’s.
Works
