Image: Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Dunedin Public Art Gallery is showing ‘Nick Austin: What Did People Do All Day?’, an exhibition of new sculptures and earlier works by the Ōtepoti Dunedin-based artist that looks closely at time, legacy, collection and place. Running from 6 June to 23 August 2026, the show gathers found objects, assemblage and display strategies into works that ask how objects carry information and stories as they move through different contexts.
According to the gallery, the exhibition explores recent concerns in Austin’s practice through a thoughtful handling of materials and a sustained interest in museological and archival forms. Rather than separating sculpture from display, the works fold in references to collecting, cataloguing and institutional presentation. The gallery says the pieces create opportunities to consider the meeting points between collections, people and stories, and the way objects and materials accumulate and shed meaning across generations, through time, and between domestic and institutional spaces.
One key work is ‘Digital Oils’ (2025), described by the gallery as a quasi-social history display centred on a collection of photographs Austin encountered in the care of Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena. Other works extend these archival echoes through modes of grouping, inscription and display. ‘To Be a Rest Home’ (2025) points toward artists and their legacies, while ‘Contractions’ (23 March 2010) and ‘Breath Spectrum’ (2025) frame the exhibition’s attention to the arc of a lifetime and the ways time is marked, measured and occupied.
The gallery’s text also notes that Austin’s practice considers how objects are loosened from their people despite the best efforts of cataloguing. That idea runs through the exhibition’s use of found objects and accumulated materials, which are assembled in ways that encourage reflection on what survives, what is recorded, and what is reassigned when artworks enter new contexts. The show presents those questions without turning away from the physical presence of the works themselves, which include sculpture, projector-based display and objects drawn from everyday life.
Austin, born in Whangārei in 1979, lives and works in Ōtepoti Dunedin. The gallery says he received his BVA from Auckland University of Technology Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau in 2001 and his MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2004. He was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka in 2012. ‘What Did People Do All Day?’ is the second exhibition in Suite 2026, an ongoing series presenting recent work by artists living and working in Ōtepoti Dunedin.
The exhibition is presented at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 30 The Octagon, Dunedin, and runs until 23 August 2026. The gallery’s online listing places the show alongside other present exhibitions, but the Austin exhibition is specifically dated 6 June to 23 August 2026 in the gallery’s own materials.
