John Walsh’s artworks deftly intertwine pulsing histories with contemporary narratives and mythology through a vivid, fluid painterly language. His timeless, familiar landscapes inhabited by marakihau, anthropomorphic beings, and a cast of spirits, messengers, and encroaching figures, creating worlds that are at once ancestral and contemporary. Throughout his practice, Walsh’s Māori and Irish whakapapa coalesce intuitively, shaping a distinctive visual language that navigates identity, memory, and belonging.
“Walsh uses earth and galaxy to depict quintessential fears of communication and raises important questions about finding a place in the world - why we must keep fighting to survive, why we must keep caring” John Pule.
John Walsh (b.1954, Te Aitanga a Hauiti / New Zealand Irish) lives and paints on the South Coast of Te-Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Walsh grew up in Uawa Tolaga Bay, on the East Coast of the North Island, and his painting practice increasingly addresses environmental concerns highlighted by the devastation of Uawa, this once idyllic environment, by poor land used decisions culminating in the “disastrous” intensive monoculture pine industry. Walsh is renowned for his painting practice that melds histories of migration and colonisation with Mātauranga Māori and contemporary narratives, carrying the viewer along on a mesmerising current of self-reflection and discovery.
Walsh attended Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury for a period and early works saw him create realist portraits of friends and whānau on the East Coast. Following a year spent working on a deep-sea Japanese trawler, Walsh participated in a project in New York in 1989 and upon his return to Aotearoa began working as Exhibitions Officer at the Gisborne Museum and Arts Centre, before eventually relocating to Wellington for the role of Curator of Contemporary Māori Art at the National Art Gallery / Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. He has exhibited widely and The New Zealand Portrait Gallery, The Dowse Art Museum, and Pātaka Art + Museum have all held significant survey exhibitions of his work. Walsh has travelled to China on various residency programmes; Antarctica as a Creative New Zealand /Antarctica New Zealand's artist-in-residence; and to Gallipoli alongside other New Zealand and Australian artists to produce work toward the touring exhibition Your Friend the Enemy.
John Walsh currently has artworks included in He Ao Āpōpō, He Ao Tea: Māori Futures curated by Cecelia Kumeroa at Te Whare o Rehua Sargeant Gallery; and in will be included in Bird Land: Te Kaahui Manu curated by Ken Hall at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, opening 15 August this year. Walsh is also working towards a survey exhibition and accompanying major publication to be held at the City Gallery Wellington in April 2027.
