SCAPE’s 2026 season arrives

waiting for the tide, a two-year project by SCAPE Public Art Managing Curator Aaron Kreisler, has started to make waves. 

Its first chapter, emanations, sees temporary artworks slip into Ōtautahi Christchurch one by one. Drawing on Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Kreisler treats the city as a place of desires and fears, somewhere to wander and to wonder, where you may stumble unwittingly upon something new. 

The most well-known artist this season is local illustrator Gavin Bishop. Lauded nationally and internationally, you could say Bishop is an unsung hero of art in his home town. 

A multiple winner of New Zealand’s children’s book awards, Bishop was nominated in 2024 for the prestigious international children’s literature prize, the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand has acquired all his original work for a dedicated Gavin Bishop archive. 

Gavin Bishop’s illustrations have been re-presented on an eight-metre-tall lightbox on Hotel Montreal’s Kilmore Street frontage. His art has walked out of picture books and now meets the city at street scale. “For anyone working in an underrated art form such as illustration, to be considered a serious artist by SCAPE is enormous,” he says. Hotel Montreal will keep Bishop’s artwork in place for two years. 

Also on now, you will find new work by Wellington photographer Shaun Waugh in lightboxes near Te Pae. Waugh has used major sculptures produced by SCAPE as a departure point for this series. “I’ve always been a big fan of SCAPE and the way it activates public art and sculpture in and around Ōtautahi,” he says. 

 As summer rolls in, four more temporary artworks will appear. Lucy Lallemant, winner of SCAPE’s inaugural tertiary Aspiring Artist prize, will present her winning installation Private Property on a vacant inner-city site. Work by professional artists Emma Fitts, Chevron Hassett, and Steven Junil Park will embellish familiar landscapes and buildings with surprising elements that invite people to look twice. 

Meanwhile, sculptures by the winners of the schools’ section of SCAPE’s Aspiring Artist competition, Huxley Pettigrew and Harvey Evans, remain on show at Tūranga, with finalists’ models at Linwood and Upper Riccarton libraries until 23 November. 

Alongside the Season, SCAPE has created free, self-guided audio tours that turn a walk, a bike ride, or a lunch break into a conversation with the city’s public art. 

Includes first image: LEFT TO RIGHT Yuno, Eloy, Harvey, and Cleo aged 7-9 record their opinions of STAY by Antony Gormley for the SCAPE Kids Art Tour; SCAPE Managing Curator Aaron Kreisler; Gavin Bishop, Lucy Lallemant, Shaun Waugh, Chevron Hassett, Seven Junil Park, Emma Fitts

SCAPE is the first New Zealand organisation to partner with Bloomberg Philanthropies on Bloomberg Connects, the app used by more than 1500 cultural institutions worldwide, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Download the free app or head to SCAPE’s website to jump straight to a sculpture, with photos, some video, and a short audio description of the work and its intent. Alternatively, follow a guided tour through gardens and parks or get on two wheels and head out on a central city bike ride. 

Two tours go further. The SCAPE Kids Art Tour is led by four Ao Tawhiti school students, aged 7–9, giving listeners a glimpse into children’s responses to art. SCAPE’s Public Art Poetry Walk, in collaboration with the Canterbury Poets’ Collective, pairs ten poets with ten sculptures for a thoughtful, original, and distinctively Christchurch experience. 

To access the audio guide and find out more, head to scapepublicart.org.nz