Artists to watch this year at the Aotearoa Art Fair 2025
Art is subjective, so giving personal takes on pieces can be superfluous. But luckily, here at Sauce, we have taste—one you can wholeheartedly trust.
Back for another year at Auckland’s Viaduct Events Centre, New Zealand’s Premier Art Fair will flourish from 1 to 4 May 2025. This year’s Aotearoa Art Fair features a smorgasbord of indigenous, POC, and multifaceted artists from all over New Zealand and Australia, showcasing various works by emerging and established artists.
Sauce has carefully curated a lineup of the best artists to watch, so when you arrive, you can walk directly to the canvas.
Proofing Blue, 2024 Arcrylic and Arcrylic Mediums and Expoxy on Board 410 x 220mm
Pillow Talk, 2023 Acrylic and Acrylic Mediums on Board 1235mm x 900mm
Vishmi Helaratne
First is Vishmi Helaratne, an emerging contemporary artist of Sri Lankan descent based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Helaratne’s works are striking–using bright electric blues and mixtures of primary colours–two things we love here at Sauce. There’s something deeply personal going on beneath the surface too, a kind of ancient-modern fusion that feels both intuitive and intentional.
Ngā Māhanga (ki Tai), 2022
Raukura Turei
Raukura Turei’s work feels like standing barefoot on the black iron sands of Te Uru—grounded, raw, and quietly powerful. A proud Māori wāhine and descendant of Taranaki Maunga, she paints with materials gathered alongside her whānau, like aumoana (blue clay) from her Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki whenua. Obsessed with natural patterns and processes of Papatūānuku, Turei’s practice is both research and ritual—a reconnection to whakapapa, atua wāhine, and body sovereignty through deeply sensual, earthbound painting. I, myself, as a West Auckland native, can viscerally feel the black sand between my feet as I look at these works.
Takapuna 3, 2022 Mixed media and custom oak bracket 1540 x 850 x 75mm
Our first swim, 2022–23 Acrylic on linen in custom sapele frame 1000 x 750mm
Jade Townsend
Another multifaceted Māma, Jade Townsend, is also a multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of her Māori, Pākehā, and British heritage. Her work examines beauty and tensions within historical artefacts relating to Aotearoa and Britain. Before heading to the AAF, I highly encourage you to check out “Alloy”, the sculpture she made for last year’s part of Te Tairawhiti Arts Festival. As Townsend herself writes: “It was vital for Alloy to have a dual consciousness, an awareness that she is born into two different cultural entities. Alloy is both Māori and non-Māori—a hybrid.”
He manu taua o te pōkai tara, 2025
Nikau Hindin
The creative process is a spiritual practice, mirroring the creation of our universe. We are vessels of an ongoing process of creation. Within us, there are many dawns. Many beginnings. And many endings, too. Nikau Hindin has spent the past decade dedicated to remembering and reinvigorating the practice of aute in Aotearoa, her art practice devoted to the life cycle of the paper mulberry plant, from its growing and harvesting, to processing the inner bark and creating a fine white cloth. Her process with the plant is transparent. If a plant has a scar, you cannot cover it up; instead, you embrace it.
Light Flicker, Oil on paper 11x16
Alex Mcfarlane
These pieces have an acute magnetism. When I stare at these pieces by Alex McFarlane, a flicker of light in a dream comes to mind. There is something deeply spacey, alien-like, and slightly extraterrestrial about how she paints. These two pieces are like entering a portal. Seeing McFarlane’s ethereal pieces up close and personal will be worth the journey.
Ripo—teeth—kākano—waka—antithesis—huinga, 2021 Fluid acrylic, gesso and cotton duck thread on canvas on ply 570 x 570mm
Pepeha—grid—nestle—pito—swim, 2018 Acrylic, rabbit-skin glue and string on cotton duck canvas 610 x 610mm
Heidi Brickless
Heidi Brickell is based in Tāmaki Makaurau, working in education and te reo Māori revitalisation. Her art practice is grounded in the psychological and informed by her fascination with language. Her works are rich in their materiality, and so they speak for themselves. She depends on complex processes, incorporating rabbit skin, pieces and threads of canvas, and a range of pigments. Colours and forms slip, slide, strengthen, and dissipate, moving between direct experience and imagination.
Sea Horse, 2024 metal foil and acrylic, 340 x 150mm
Nat Tozer
Nat Tozer’s work feels like unearthing a story half-buried beneath myth and geology. Her use of discarded cushion covers as relics of ritual and constellation speaks to a tactile memory of place and travel. She excavates both material and meaning, splicing science fiction with local lore and folk tales with network theory. I am pulled deep into her practice's pulsing sense of inquiry, whether she is tunnelling into forgotten ecologies or quietly reframing how we perceive knowledge, resistance, and connection.
SS3_2, 2024 JBH initials hand stamped on the top of the rear right hand foot, Powder coated aluminium, aluminium, thermoplastic polyester, stainless steel fixings, 44.5 x 45 x 35
