Louise Stevenson is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Honiara, Solomon Islands, and based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her projects range across drawing, photography, moving-image, painting, book-making and writing.
Interested in travel, fluid global situations and narratives, Louise responds to decolonial and trans-national contexts. She frequently explores shifting cultural and geo-political relationships between different places and times, often drawing on her vibrant upbringing in Solomon Islands, the diverse cultural environment of Aotearoa New Zealand and a long-term connection to Budapest, Hungary.
Modernist architecture of the colonial era in the tropics is a particular research focus, informed by a family archive of photographic and film material. She has published papers on tropical modern architecture in the Pacific and presented at conferences in New Zealand and Australia.
Louise holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and was a senior lecturer at the Manukau School of Visual Arts and a professional teaching fellow at the University of Auckland. She established the community based arts business ArtSpark, sharing a vision for contemporary art-making. Currently she is the Director of Te Toi Uku, Crown Lynn and Clayworks Museum in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
louisestevenson74 (at) gmail.com
@_louise_stevenson_
Essays & Press
Open the Borders, Expand the Mind, The Big Idea, Soap Box, 2022
On Louise Stevenson’s ‘Someplace Else’, Chris Holdaway essay, Contemporary HUM, 2021
Someplace Else, a feature in HERE magazine, issue 6, 2021
Black Hibiscus, Radio New Zealand interview, Arts on Sunday, Pacific Issues correspondent Richard Pamatatau, 2008
Nothing but Something, First Draft, Sydney exhibition with Frances Hansen, essay by Grant Thompson, 2008
Nancy, group exhibition catalogue essay, Bronwyn Lloyd, 2003
Projects & Exhibitions
Unbound, solo exhibition, Skar Image Lab, 2022
Someplace Else: A Travel Archive, solo exhibition, Corbans Estate Arts Centre, 2022
Someplace Else, artist book published 2021, funded by Creative New Zealand
Someplace Else, the Project Wall, Te Tuhi, 2021
Transparencies, photography prize awarded by curator Ioana Gordon-Smith, Art West exhibition 2016
Sea, Sight, Site, film screening at Building Is/ Not Drawing, Adam Art Gallery, 2015
Images and Islands, Mangere Arts Centre, 2013
The National Solomon Islands Library, Auckland City Library, 2013
Black Hibiscus, Fresh Gallery, Otara, Auckland, 2008
Something from Nothing, exhibition with Frances Hansen, First Draft Gallery, Sydney, 2008
Writing
(Re)constructing Tropical Architecture in Solomon Islands: Conversations with my Father Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2014
Communications Building: Tropical Modern Architecture from West Africa to the Pacific Translation: Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, vol. 31, 2014
Concrete Activities: Tropical Modern Buildings in the Pacific
Paper presented at the Open Hand Symposium, Auckland University of Technology, 2014.