Wāhine Māori Artists Take Centre Stage in Art Auction
A stellar cohort of female, Māori artists is leading the charge in this particular catalogue, Webb’s June Select online art auction, celebrating voices that have long shaped Aotearoa’s visual art landscape.
Lot 38. Star Gossage, Girl of Morning, 2014, oil on board, signed, dated and title inscribed verso, 300 × 245mm. EST. $12,000 – $18,000
A significant cohort of female Māori artists is leading the charge in Webb’s Select online art auction, celebrating voices that have long shaped Aotearoa’s visual arts landscape. Featuring works by Star Gossage (Ngāti Wai / Ngāti Ruanui), Robin White (Ngāti Awa and Pākehā), Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht), Robyn Kahukiwa (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Konohi, Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare), and Pauline Yearbury (Ngāpuhi), the catalogue presents a cross-generational dialogue that speaks to identity, whakapapa, and mana wāhine.
These artists—who were active from the 1950s to today—represent a rich tapestry of iwi affiliations and ancestral lands ranging from the Far North through to Te Wai Pounamu and their works represent equally diverse viewpoints.
Together, these artists challenge, reinterpret, and elevate what it means to be wāhine Māori in Aotearoa today. From the robust political stances of Kahukiwa’s feminist iconography to the poetic stillness and explorations of memory of Pardington’s photography, each work is a testament to both cultural legacy and creative evolution.
Crucially, this catalogue reflects a growing, critical recognition of Māori women artists not as peripheral contributors, but as central to the narrative of contemporary New Zealand art.
“I think there has also been purposeful neglect, along with a Eurocentric assessment of what counts as important New Zealand art. It’s not just a case of artists needing to ‘come into their own.’ Having said that, the climate is changing for the better.” — Gallerist Tim Melville (Te Arawa and Te Atiawa).
There is an undeniable shift in New Zealand toward better understanding and appreciating our wealth of indigenous cultural outputs. A Ministry for Culture & Heritage 2024 report* stated that the Māori arts and creative sector contributes $1.6 billion to New Zealand’s total economy, with 2022 seeing a 13.4% percent increase of GDP contribution compared to 2021*. This auction is a much welcomed reflection of that trend.
Their practices—often based on traditional wisdom, techniques and materiality—expand beyond aesthetics, operating as acts of reclamation, resistance, and/or cultural transmission. In an art market that has historically underrepresented indigenous female voices, this group offers a profound recalibration— foregrounding indigenous epistemologies, intergenerational knowledge, and a distinctly Māori worldview through compelling visual language.
This auction marks not only a significant moment in the art market but a broader cultural shift—where the perspectives of Māori women are not just acknowledged, but celebrated and driving investment on the main stage. “It takes time to turn the ship around but I’m optimistic for the future,” according to gallerist Tim Melville, “people are becoming more educated and, as we know, the more you know about something the more interesting it becomes!”
Webb’s Select online art auction takes place from 9–23 June. The works will be launched and toured in Wellington (11–14 June) and then Auckland (June 17–23) with all bidding taking place online and closing on Monday June 23, from 8pm.
Lot 35. Robin White, Relatives at the Makatu Church Oamaru, 1974, screenprint on paper, signed, dated and title inscribed, 585mm × 405mm. EST. $8,000 – $14,000
Lot 13. Pauline and James Yearbury, Te Ika-a-Māui, acrylic on incised rimu, signed, 605 × 305mm. EST. $4,000 – $6,000
“Things go in and out of fashion, but great art is great art. Wāhine Māori artists are well and truly on collectors’ radars now. I don’t think you can un-ring a bell.” —Tim Melville, Gallerist
Māori Female Artists in this Catalogue
Pauline Yearbury
An early trailblazer, Pauline Yearbury (Ngāpuhi) was among the first Māori women to attend Elam School of Fine Arts and to gain national recognition for her work in the mid-20th century. Her paintings and illustrated books helped visualise Māori cosmological narratives for new audiences, combining a modernist aesthetic with strong narrative clarity. Yearbury’s legacy endures as a foundational and precursory figure in the rise of contemporary Māori art.
Robyn Kahukiwa
A pioneering voice expressing mana wāhine (female leadership and authority) in contemporary Māori art, Robyn Kahukiwa (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Konohi, Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare) is known for bold, narrative-driven paintings that centre the Māori Tino Rangatiratanga sovereignty movement and identity. With a practice spanning more than five decades, her work remains unapologetically political and fiercely empowering, all the while drawing strength from Māori cosmologies, ancestral knowledge and lived experience.
Robin White
One of Aotearoa’s most celebrated artists, Dame Robin White (Ngāti Awa, Pākehā) is known for her clean-lined, light-filled depictions of everyday life. Her later work reflects a deep engagement with Pacific collaboration and spiritual symbolism, combining printmaking traditions with themes of shared humanity and cultural interconnection. White’s practice bridges regional and international conversations, grounded in a lifelong commitment to community and place.
Fiona Pardington
From Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, and Ngāti Kahungunu photographer Fiona Pardington is acclaimed for her richly lit still lives and deeply symbolic images that honour memory, mortality, and taonga Māori. Her work reanimates museum-held objects and ancestral taonga tuku iho, restoring mana and voice through intimate, almost cinematic photography. Pardington’s lens acts as both mirror and portal, revealing unseen narratives and memories beneath the surface.
Star Gossage
Ethereal portraits emerge from deep subconscious expression and wairua Māori connection or deep spiritual interrelationship to Gossage’s ancestral whenua in Pākiri. Of Ngāti Manuhiri, Ngāti Ruanui and European descent, Gossage’s paintings offer haunting psychological reflections, drawing on both her Māori and Pākehā heritage.
Watch—
In this video, Caroline Vercoe takes us through some of the strong cohort of Māori and Pacific artists represented in Select—Webb’s current online art auction catalogue.
Caroline Vercoe (Vailima, Samoa, Aotearoa New Zealand) is an Associate Professor at The University of Auckland. She teaches Global Art Histories, Māori and Pacific Art History and Visual Culture, and Contemporary Art in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Caroline was the speaker at our Auckland launch event of Select.
A (very) quick guide to Wahine Māori Artists
It is no surprise that the popularity of female Māori artists in contemporary art is continuing a vital transformation in both the art world and broader cultural identity of Aotearoa New Zealand. Beginning with early pioneers like Pauline Yearbury, Māori women have been forging spaces in a field long dominated by Pākehā male perspectives, and to some extent by Māori male contemporary art precursors. Thankfully, this sensibility has shifted significantly since the rise of Māori-led contemporary Māori art education at tertiary levels across the country.
“I think of Toihou at Auckland, Toioho ki Āpiti in Palmerston North, Toihoukura in Tairawhiti and others at Auckland University of Technology have ensured critical impact and in understanding how significant wāhine Māori artists are now dominating on the global contemporary art stage. I think the main thing is that recognising a complementarity of roles between tane and wāhine, and even the rise of queer Māori artists, is helping reshape this indigenous-led arena of artistic excellence.” Huhana Smith, Head of Art, Massey University.
The last nearly 30 years has seen a dramatic shift in calibre of wāhine Māori alumni who are confident, wielding te reo, and who are culturally astute. They take their practices to the world with great impact.
“The rise of Māori women’s art in the late 1970s owed much to the international women’s art movement. The raw expressionism of Kura Te Waru Rewiri, Emare Karaka, Diane Prince and Shona Rapira Davies positioned women painters and sculptors as a distinctive and powerful force within the contemporary Māori art movement.” Jonathan Mane-Wheoki in Contemporary Māori art – ngā toi hōu, Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Māori Renaissance (Te Huarau Hou) also gave rise to powerful voices such as Robyn Kahukiwa, who’s politically charged, figurative paintings elevated mana wāhine, setting the stage for a new wave of visibility.
Into the 1990s and 2000s, artists like Lisa Reihana gained international acclaim with interdisciplinary works that challenge colonial narratives—most notably — and more recently— with her video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected], which reimagines Pacific encounters with Captain Cook. Fiona Pardington’s evocative photography of taonga Māori and ancestral touchstones further deepened contemporary conversations around memory and repatriation of culturally significant taonga tuku iho.
Then, came 2020: “I don’t think we can underestimate the ripple effect of Nigel Borell’s Toi Tu Toi Ora record-breaking show at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in 2020,” said gallerist Tim Melville, “in this survey of contemporary Māori art from the 1950s to the present we were introduced to the work of 110 Māori artists, approximately half women and many of them unfamiliar, but who had all been making art for decades, hiding in plain sight.”
This show, along with its exceptional printed catalogue marked somewhat of a seismic shift in the industry.
Meanwhile, The Mataaho Collective, a Māori art collective composed of female practitioners, achieved a significant milestone in 2024 by earning the Golden Lion at the 60th Venice Biennale for their large-scale installation, Takapau, inspired by Māori finely woven whariki (mats).
These artists are a very small sample of the many talented wāhine who foreground whakapapa, wairua, and decolonial practice, redefining contemporary art through indigenous frameworks, whilst keeping a firm footing in te ao Māori.
Today, female Māori artists stand at the forefront of global indigenous art, their work resonating across museums, biennales, and cultural institutions worldwide, as powerful custodians of both tradition and transformation.
Select | Online Art Auction
19—23 June