Image: New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington
A focused survey of Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury, a foundational figure in contemporary Māori art, is on view at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington through 6 September 2026. ‘Life in Forms: Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury’ brings together sketches, paintings and incised wood panels spanning the Ngāpuhi artist’s career from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The exhibition, which comes to the gallery from Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, examines Yearbury’s distinctive treatment of the human form. Her figures are presented as carriers of energy and emotion, with the works also reflecting her commitment to sharing Māori cultural narratives. The exhibition is curated by Hester Rowan, with texts written with input from Megan Tamati-Quennell.
Yearbury is recognised by the gallery as the first Māori artist to portray Māori creation narratives in a modern idiom and as the first Māori artist to train at Elam School of Fine Arts. Born Pauline Kahurangi Blomfield in Matauri Bay in the Far North, she attended Elam from 1943 to 1949 and later joined its staff as a tutor.
The survey includes life drawings made during her years at Elam, demonstrating her close study of human anatomy. Works from the 1960s and 1970s show the emergence of her characteristic illustrative style. In these paintings, sketches and wooden panels, angular or sinuous outlines define stylised bodies folded into rectangular frames. The subjects include atua, or deities; tūpuna, or ancestors; and personifications of the seasons drawn from Māori genealogical and cosmological narratives.
Yearbury’s work also developed through spaces and projects connected to the presentation of Māori art. In 1966, she exhibited four paintings in ‘New Zealand Māori Culture and the Contemporary Scene’, a landmark exhibition guest curated by artist Buck Nin and Baden Pere at Canterbury Museum that later toured internationally. The following year, she and her husband and fellow Elam student Jim Yearbury opened the Colonial Gallery in Kororāreka Russell, where they sold and promoted her work. The wooden panels were designed by Yearbury and incised by her husband.
In 1976, Yearbury published ‘The Children of Rangi and Papa: The Māori Story of Creation’, pairing reproductions of 15 paintings with her retelling of the Māori creation story recorded by George Grey in 1855. Her career ended the following year with her death in 1977. The New Zealand Portrait Gallery’s presentation is being held at Shed 11, 60 Lady Elizabeth Lane, Wellington, and remains open daily from 10am to 4.30pm until Sunday, 6 September.
