11 June — 6 September 2026
Nova Paul:
Puawānanga
Opening Event: Friday 12 June • 5:30 - 7:30PM
Beginning with the possibility that every tree has, and is, a story, Puawānanga is Nova Paul’s latest 16mm film, made using plant-based hand processing to create a developer emulsion. Puawānanga is an aka, or clematis vine, that weaves its way through the ngahere and is the embodiment of the pua—the blossoming—of the wānanga.
Nova Paul, Puawānanga, 2026 (still). Image courtesy of the artist.
Drawing on the ngahere that has been Nova Paul’s wānanga for the past year, the film is made of and from the leaves of rākau and the aka (or clematis vine). The black-and-white film of the blossoming Puawānanga traces the clematis as it drapes across the treetops in the maramataka of Mahuru, during the month of spring and the equinox. Puawānanga, the child of Puanga and Rehua — atua of harvesting and new beginnings, healing and kindness—is the putiputi that emerges from Matariki. Its white flowers, cascading and cloaking the trees like fallen stars, arrive between the winter star and the summer star — as a thread between the cold months of the wānanga and the warmer months that lead into mahi tahi.
Through Nova Paul’s hand processing — plant-based developing — the technique, with the taking and the making of the film, reveals not only an image but also the mauri of the tree. These arboreal self-portraits enable trees to commune directly through an embodied medium, echoing photosynthesis: where sunlight produces chlorophyll, here chlorophyll produces images of light.
About the artist • Nova Paul (Ngāpuhi)
Nova Paul is filmmaker from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Drawing from her Ngāpuhi ancestry, Nova’s films create an image of everyday self-determination. Using early cinematic film processes and experimental film practices and weaving traditional stories and Indigenous knowledge she considers the poetics and politics of place to create an image of Indigenous Māori sovereignty. In her technicolour films, colour separation techniques explored ways in which film could picture spirit (wairua) layering genealogy (whakapapa) to imagine decolonial thought. Her recent B&W 16mm films are hand-processed in plant-based developer, using the leaves of the trees filmed to create a film developer. The filmic outcomes are not so much about trees but by trees, exploring ways in which photosynthesis, film making, and spirit, are intertwined and where the mauri (life force) is revealed.
Nova Paul’s films have screened throughout Aotearoa New Zealand in all major galleries including, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Wellington City Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and in Australia Melbourne Museum, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Artspace Sydney. She has presented films in the New Zealand Film Festival, Oberhaussen, London Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Recontres Internationale, George Pompidou Centre, Whitechapel Gallery UK and Artists' Films International at the Venice Biennale. Her film Hawaiki (2022) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023.
Events & Public Programme
Opening celebration
Friday 12 June • 5:30 - 7:30PM