Under, Over and Across

Saturday, 14 February 2026 10:00 am 10:00
Friday, 13 March 2026 8:00 pm 20:00

Toi Pōneke Arts Centre 61 Abel Smith Street, Te Aro, Wellington Wellington New Zealand (map)

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Lisa Munnelly and Angela Kilford

14 Feb - 13 March 2026

Angela Kilford Te Whanau A Kai, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu is an artist, designer, educator and researcher living in Te Whanganui A Tara. Her current research practice focuses on how mātauranga Māori and Māori participation can inform textile design practice and research to produce ways to benefit Māori communities and to sustain Papatūānuku. Alongside this, Angela's art practice explores the whakapapa of local ecology and the lesser-known connections between living and non-living entities. These ideas are examined and expressed through walking, performance, collaborative making, large scale public installations and writing.

Lisa Munnelly is an artist and writer whose practice examines the relationship between mind, matter, action and form. With a close and constant study of materiality, Munnelly employs mark-making and repetition to enact, analyze and celebrate different materials, and their capacity to both perform and transform. Munnelly is a Senior Lecturer in Textiles at Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University

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. As Munnelly seeks to elevate the canvas by exposing the materiality of the surface, Kilford reveals the workings of textile surfaces through upscaled structural motifs and live raranga sessions in the gallery. Together, Under, Over and Across will present painting interwoven with participatory performance practice, public engagement framed and informed by compositions of connection, and an exhibition celebrating the interrelation between material, maker and making.

Munnelly's work manifests as an intimate study of surface. Through a process of mark-making and measurement, paintings support - the canvas, is celebrated rather than concealed. Carefully measured brushstrokes skim across the surface -highlighting the woven texture of the canvas primer. Measurement is a key aspect of the works; the measure of the brush dictates the scale of the pattern, whilst the weight, direction and speed of each brush stroke determine the tonal range of the marks.

Kilford uses the language of weaving and raranga to illustrate ideas of whakapapa through interlacing materials around, behind and in front, using body memory to weave intricate patterns. The angles are never measured, rather the hands and body create surface and structure, and through repeated movements, a tacit knowledge of pattern emerges, akin to Munnelly’s growing apprehension of pattern in her paintings. For Under, Over and Across, Kilford draws inspiration from her work with harakeke to develop handwoven pieces on a 24-shaft floor loom.