brunelle dias primbs
mysterium rationis
Mau Āhua, 2026 (installation)
Grace presents mysterium rationis, an exhibition by brunelle dias primbs.
In mysterium rationis, brunelle dias primbs enacts a reciprocal touch between image and world, where paintings emerge as both witness and offering. The works gather souvenirs of lived and inherited experience, as memory and image oscillate across the canvas. Shaped by the conditions of tourism and family travel, the “old world” empire is reframed through faith, migration, and inheritance. Within this shifting ground, dias primbs traces a consciousness unfolding between reverence and critique.
brunelle dias primbs (India, Aotearoa New Zealand) is a painter who attends to the figure and its painterly ground. Often diaristic, her practice explores ideas of temporality, sacredness, and the interconnection between the self and its environment. dias primbs holds a Master of Visual Arts from AUT School of Art and Design.
Recent exhibitions include Dreaming from Afar (Gus Fisher Gallery, 2026); A Moment to Hold (The Arts House Trust, 2025); aaj kal (CoCA, 2024); yahaan (Corban’s Estate Art Centre, 2024); kiss taraf (The Art Paper Office, 2023); soft protest (Play_Station, 2023); and the way things are (The Physics Room, 2022).
hotline, 2026 Oil on canvas 950 x 950
low hanging fruit, 2026 & horse phases, 2026 (installation)
low hanging fruit, 2026 Oil on canvas
350 x 450
horse phases, 2026 Oil on canvas
900 x 900
souvenir ii: cherub feature, 2026 Oil on canvas
300 x 260
but the flesh, 2026 Oil on canvas
850 x 850
plastic fresco iii: is this it?, 2026 & souvenir i: rapture, 2026 (installation view)
The Pursuit of Mātauranga, 2026 (detail)
Georgia T. D. Hood Te Kuikui (The Matriarch), 2026 Stoneware, glaze 460 x 330 x 320
Te Kuikui (The Matriarch), 2026 (detail)
Mau Āhua, 2026 (installation)
Atarangi Anderson Pou whakamauāhua, ngā pātiki, 2026 Aute, muka, pāua 1730 x 380 (framed)
Pou whakamauāhua, ngā pātiki, 2026 (detail)
Atarangi Anderson Pou whakamauāhua,ngā tiki, 2026 Aute, muka, pāua 1730 x 380 (framed)
Pou whakamauāhua,ngā tiki, 2026 (detail)
Georgia T. D. Hood Moko, 2025 Stoneware, glaze 470 × 260 × 260
Georgia T. D. Hood Hine-nui-te-pō, 2026 Raku clay, glaze 530 x 540 x 250
Hine-nui-te-pō, 2026
Atarangi Anderson and Georgia Tikaputini Douglas Hood each work with whenua-born materials — aute and uku — to hold and transmit whakapapa. Anderson’s kiriaute practice moves between onamata and anamata — between the past and the future. The aute cloth carries the imprint of tīpuna while remaining in service to mokopuna, used within whānau contexts such as tangihanga and birth. Hood’s amphora-like vessels approach figuration through clay, where anthropomorphic bodies emerge as acknowledgements of tīpuna presence and vehicles for processing intergenerational grief. Across both practices, material becomes a site where wairua, memory, and whenua are held in tension — the aute carrying non-linear time through its fibres, and the uku forming bodies that carry their own mauri.
Both wāhine Māori are looking to hold tight to Māoritanga — carving, embossing, lifting up, uncovering an essence.
Mau Āhua is accompanied by a commissioned essay by Eve Armstrong-Coop (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha):
Apa, 2026 (installation)
Atarangi Anderson Apa, 2026 Aute, muka, pāua, tānekaha 570 x 500 (framed)
Please contact the gallery here to receive a catalogue for Mau Āhua.