SPA_CE is pleased to welcome Maia McDonald to the gallery with her inaugural show ‘Kotahi’.

The main suite of watercolour paintings in this solo exhibition are a monochromatic exploration into form and iridescent light, running in a similar vein to Maia McDonald’s earlier coffee and ink series collected by Wellington City Art Collection. Maia’s new works employ motifs that are recognisable as Māori, yet the images also have an unknown quality to them.

The paintings are a surreal adventure into the abstract world that the artist explores with her brush. ‘Kotahi’ is an exploration into the internal world of the Artist, a meditation on the otherworldly, with titles like ‘Sound Shell’’ and ‘Not a puppet to the man’ speaking to themes around relationships and our place in the world.

We also present a series of ceramic tiles, an introduction to the artist’s clay practice, With earthy tones and indigenous shapes, these tiles mimic some of the ideas explored in the works on paper.