Bailee Lobb
8 - 29 May
Bailee Lobb’s new exhibition In Bathing, Bask considers how spaces can act as a supportive environment for stimming, sensory processing and soothing the nervous system.
Disabled artist Bailee describes living with a highly sensitised central nervous system like ‘living with the volume turned up on all your sensory inputs’ – everything is too loud, too busy, too much. She has created a series of undulating textile spaces for Toi Pōneke Gallery, transforming it into a stimulatory playground for interactive fun, sensory play, and self-regulation.
Gallery visitors are invited to enter and explore the inflatable spaces. Bailee describes being inside these spaces as like bathing in pure hue – everything is filtered by the colour of the hand dyed textile shell. There are no corners; floor, walls and ceiling melt into one another, and the light is diffused. The gentle hum of a fan dulls outside sounds. In Bathing, Bask presents sensory information as intense and uncomplicated. In effect, the active and simplified stimulation starts to turn down the volume.
associated events at toi pōneke
yoga in big blue with sonsie elliot
wednesday 19 may, 6:30pm - 7:30pm
folding patterns workshop - dying with shibori
saturday 22 may, 10:30am - 1:30pm
other exhibitions
Daniel Beban and Tim Barlow's immersive, interactive sound installation fills the environment of Toi Pōneke gallery for the final exhibition at the Able-Smith Street space.
Toi Pōneke is excited to present Koru meets Tartan by Toi Pōneke Art Centre’s 2024 Visual Arts Residency recipient Mitchell Manual, opening on Saturday 21st March 2026.
Exploring the potential of woven structures through textile making, the exhibition by Angela Kilford and Lisa Munnelly titled Under, Over and Across creates a dialogue between painting, raranga and hand-woven works.
voices notations distortion is the debut solo show by artist and musician Gemma Thompson at Toi Pōneke Gallery 17 Jan - 6 Feb 2026. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations, the exhibition explores her soundwalking practice through graphic scores, realised as drawings, paintings, prints, and sonic compositions. Each mark resonates with its own energy – echoing, layering, and unfolding across the surface.
In Each Other’s Pockets opens Friday 24 October 2025 at Toi Pōneke Gallery, Te Aro, Wellington.
Through her playful installation, contemporary jeweller Louise Hill interrogates the politics of pockets; the private spaces that shape how we move through the world, investigating what it means for some to be equipped with the tools they need, while others are not.
20 years at Abel Smith looks back on the tapestry of Toi Pōneke at Abel Smith Street and invites artists, friends, family and guest on a small stroll down memory lane in hopes to build an even stronger step forward into the future. Opens Friday 5:30 24 Oct and is on in the back gallery until Friday 21 Nov 2025.
He Whare Mahana - a warm house, a full house, a cosy kainga to nurture your dreams and the infi nite queer possibilities. Tātou āhuru mōwai, nau mai, haere mai.
Artists Katy Cottrell and Rick Allender explore the connection between land and sea through intricate works crafted from natural wood veneers.
What is the connection between sugar, colonisation, global trade and climate change?
Azucar/Sugar is an explorative gallery experience that uses sugar sculptures, videos and digital art to trace how European and US conquest terraformed the environment from a living entity that encompassed the living spirits of the land, water, plants, animals and humans into an inert repository of resources to be harvested and harnessed for profit. Azucar/Sugar is the latest installation from With Lime, the long-standing collaboration between William Franco and Miki Seifert.
Sonic artist Kieran Monaghan presents GUEST, an interdisciplinary exhibition of sound, image and organic matter, which offers up a sonic practice for the Anthropocene. This body of work explores a practice that places the ‘human’ not at the centre, but as an ongoing active collaborator. Working as a member of the non-human/tech/human trio, vegetable.machine.animal, Monaghan makes space where the voice of the ‘Other’ is amplified and essential to the voice of the ‘Whole’.
This May, Toi Pōneke Gallery presents a compelling mother-son exhibition that reclaims vision and voice through the powerful mediums of painting and photography. Featuring the evocative work of Ashraf Pirnia and Pedram Pirnia, this showcase dives into deep introspection and feminist resistance, amplifying silenced voices and uncovering layers of identity, truth, and transformation.
see other past exhibitions in the gallery archive
- Posted in exhibition
- Tagged installation, 2021, accessable, sensory, colour, textile, hand dyed, sewing, interactive