Made, Stevei Houkāmau, Sam Kelly, Kelly McDonald, Neke Moa, Joe Sheehan, and Matthew McIntyre Wilson: Online catalogue

Bringing together six artists, Neke Moa, Joe Sheehan, Stevei Houkāmau, Sam Kelly, Kelly McDonald, and Matthew McIntyre Wilson, Made reflects the increasingly expanded field of contemporary jewellery practice in Aotearoa, moving between adornment, sculpture, uku, installation, and object-making..

Within the exhibition, bone, stone, metal, uku, fibre, and found materials are explored and transformed through processes that speak to memory, whakapapa, utility, adornment, and care.

Neke Moa (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Ahuriri, Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) works in collaboration with atua and te taiao, creating adornment and sculptural taonga that hold ancestral presence and connection.

Joe Sheehan’s stone-carving practice moves between adornment, artefact, and sculpture, examining the complex relationship between material, body, and environment.

Stevei Houkāmau (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) uses uku to explore whakapapa and wāhine connections across Te Moana nui a Kiwa. Her carved uku forms move between adornment, installation, and sculptural presence.

Kelly McDonald collects and rearranges fragments of domestic and industrial life, creating compositions that sit between adornment, artefact, and wall-based object.

Sam Kelly uses meticulously prepared bone to create intricate sculptural forms that hold tension, movement, and energy through processes of cutting, shaping, and joining.

Matthew McIntyre Wilson (Taranaki, Ngā Māhanga, Tītahi) draws from customary Māori weaving practices, translating raranga techniques into precious materials through detailed processes of making, research, and cultural reconnection.

Underlying the exhibition is a shared responsibility toward the materials being worked with and the histories they carry. Together, the artists in Made expand contemporary ideas of adornment and object-making, reflecting on identity, cultural continuity, and what it means to make in Aotearoa today.

A text by Zoe Black will accompany the exhibition.

A friend in South Africa creates jewellery pieces in the tradition of Zulu love letters – intricately beaded compositions that carry encrypted messages of affection and courtship and act as a form of communication between lovers within communities bound by discretion. She describes the pieces as poetry you can wear, a tangible and deeply coded tradition that spans generations.

Here in Aotearoa, I see our contemporary jewellery traditions in a similar way, pieces created as love letters to our ancestors and to our land, Papatūānuku, and the incredible materials she offers. These are rituals that travel through recent movements and back to Māori customary practices where accessible natural resources are honoured above precious and processed metals. Stones and fibres, bone and uku lovingly crafted to wear, traversing the visible realm and absorbing the mauri of each custodian as powerful taonga.

Together, this group of makers continues to investigate materials found both here and outside of Aotearoa while pressing the boundaries of these customs in respect to their own whakapapa and histories – some considering the ways future manifestations of culture can be articulated, others incorporating found materials and objects reflective of modern life. Their shared focus on material explorations allows for making that crosses the edges of jewellery, playing with scale and shifting between the body and the wall.

Neke Moa (Whare Papaīra, Ngāti Kahungunu, Kai Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) creates through collaboration with tōhunga, atua and the natural world. Pūrakau are revealed and interpreted through the making of taoka, for adornment and ritual, connecting and building relationships with the unseen world. Her practice sits naturally between display and wear – the walls of her home are filled with adornment and compositions in progress, keeping warm as they move between her studio and body, hands and back again.

Matthew McIntyre Wilson’s (Taranaki, Nga Mahanga, Titahi) practise is defined by persistent explorations of customary Māori practices. McIntyre Wilson is motivated by meaningful research into knowledge potentially lost and the power of reviving connections through making. Here, he is incorporating construction techniques with objects symbolic of confrontation and the oppression of Indigenous peoples, reflective of the current political climate and the continued fight for mana motuhake.

Stevei Houkāmau (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Rangitāne) employs uku as a means to describe connections across Te Moana nui a Kiwa. Delicately formed uku niho or celestial rays are strung together to an impressive human scale, giving physicality to whakapapa and our connection as wahine to the earth. In this way, the taonga sits between inherited knowledge and imagined futures, proposing whakapapa itself as a living technology carried and adapted across generations.

Joe Sheehan brings the everyday into the potent realm of stone carving as disposable objects are monumentalised via flawless carving techniques. In his adornment, a desire to confront the relationship between the wearer and the origin of the materials used in jewellery is intensified with his stone remaining as untouched as possible. Its beauty amplified through contrasting the raw natural forms with smooth finished surfaces.

Kelly McDonald collects detritus of urban life, deconstructs and reforms into new arrangements. McDonald often refers to her childhood upbringing near power stations and their looming industrial aesthetic as her inspiration. She responds to this influence by delicately translating found objects into compositions, exploring the materials and wearability of these new mechanized artefacts.

Sam Kelly uses meticulously prepared bone to create frozen contortions – movement and energy distilled. The cutting, sanding, shaping and joining of each section shows a methodical devotion to the bone, that regards the colours, textures and malleability of the material. Playing with scale, her works shift between jewellery and sculpture. With each she teases out different aspects of the bone, acknowledging the beauty of this often never seen material.

The practice of making adornment can be complicated in its relationship to extraction and commodification and beautiful in its ability to translate emotions to physical form. Here in Aotearoa, there is a relational paradigm within the discipline and an effort to  understand what it means to make here and now as Māori and Pākehā contemporary jewellers. At the centre is an understanding of how materials can define our location in time and space, and our relationships to one another.

The obligation of upholding the mana of stones and fibres, bone and uku and responsibility to the mauri of natural resources is vital to ensuring material enquiry can continue. Some of the practitioners shown here lead the evolution of cross-cultural dialogues and ensuring the reciprocity necessary in approaching making with these  materials remains present in practice. Together, this group articulates forms of adornment in response to shifts in identity, new eras in cultural politics and accentuating an understanding of what it means to be here, making together.

Zoe Black, 2026