Go to Eastside Gallery
Sarah Brown, “Land/Whenua,” carpet in recycled frame, 2026
Unreal Canterbury brings together 11 artists whose works tilt the familiar, unsettle the expected, and reimagine the region. Canterbury appears as a place both real and slipping: braided rivers and devastating floods sit alongside scorched and ravaged earth; the land – and our identity – is staked and challenged. Familiar touchstones become strange and alien. Do we recognise ourselves in the messaging of a clean, green landscape and a shiny, rebuilt city, or does the lived reality tell a different story?
Across painting, sculpture, photography, moving image, textile and monoprints, the exhibition invites viewers to consider not only what this place is, but what it has been, what it might become, and the versions of it we carry within us.
Artists: Cakkie Lou, Dusty Urchin, Joe Furniss, Judy Rogers, Meg Maguire, Milly Brown, Olivia Mercer, Ros Huppert, Ross Ellen, Sarah Brown and Tom McCone.
Floor talks with the Curator will take place every Saturday at 11am throughout the show.
Exhibition opens 26 May and runs until 20 June at Eastside Gallery.