The Lightship

Introducing the latest piece exhibiting on The Lightship, titled ‘Slow Fever’, by artist Nicola Farquhar.

In Nicola's new work for The Lightship, Slow Fever, scrolling passages from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel, in which the young Victor recounts the near-madness of his creative fervour, are accompanied by a cheerily rotating modernist colour wheel.

Nicola is currently based in Auckland and is a painter that works primarily in oil on linen. Her paintings often use rich and vibrant colours and she explores traditional portraiture through experimentation with colour, space, and science fiction elements.

‘Slow Fever’ will be live on The Lightship from dusk till dawn until 27 November 2024.

Learn more here: https://www.thelightship.co.nz/

Here's a look back at our Pride Month tribute back in February of this year 🌈

The Lightship was the perfect canvas to celebrate and uplift the rainbow community at the heart of Auckland city.

Introducing the latest piece exhibiting on The Lightship, titled ‘Frequency Colour’, by artist Clinton Watkins.

In Clinton Watkins’ Frequency Colour, bands of coloured light, patterns and undulating swathes of seemingly-random visual noise pass over the screen like capricious, technological weather.

These visuals were generated emergently by feeding an experimental electronic soundtrack into a bespoke analogue video hardware setup, lending a visual form to its spectral hums and auditory fuzz. This machine synaesthesia holds a crooked mirror to the way the human mind interprets the arbitrary sense data of the phenomenal world to stake a claim of meaning and coherence.

Watkins is Programme Director at AUT’s School of Future Environments, works across audio visual installation and experimental music and has been producing, exhibiting and performing his work for over 20 years throughout New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Asia and the United States.

Clinton Watkin's work will be live from dusk until dawn every night on Quay Street until 9 August, 2024.

You can learn more here: www.thelightship.co.nz.

As part of Artweek Auckland, we’re excited to showcase a new piece by Jae Hoon Lee, titled ‘The Long White Cloud’.

In Jae Hoon Lee’s new work, a scrolling band of clouds drifts across a blue sky. The work presents the sky-as-metaphor, symbolising freedom, release, salvation, and any number of other positively charged ideas.

Lee’s digital photographs, video installation and sculpture have been exhibited widely in New Zealand and internationally over the past fifteen years, and acquired for both public and private collections. Lee won the prestigious Wallace Arts Trust Paramount Award in 2013, including a 6-month residency in the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, New York City; and in 2014 was awarded the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s Cemeti Art House Residency in Indonesia.

Artweek in the Auckland city centre takes place from October 6-15, with over 50 pop-up exhibitions, galleries, laneway installations, free art walks and more, as well as Late Night Art on 12 October.

Jae Hoon Lee’s piece will be live until 21 January 2024.

Introducing the latest piece exhibiting on The Lightship, titled 'Emma's Rain', by artist Andrew Beck.

In Emma’s Rain, Andrew Beck brings the themes and ideas that permeate his photogram and installation practice to the macro-scale video format of The Lightship. In this piece, footage shot using a thermal-imaging camera is cropped and manipulated to produce a mirage-like terrain of shifting colour and flowing, organic shapes.

Andrew Beck lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Beck continues to exhibit widely in New Zealand and overseas and his works are held in major public and private collections both nationally and internationally. In November 2019 he was awarded an artist-in-residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida.

The commissioned site-specific artwork which will be displayed on The Lightship from dusk until dawn every night until June 29, 2023.

You can learn more here: www.thelightship.co.nz

Thank you to everyone who came and viewed Sonya Lacey's piece for The Lightship, 'Chlorophyll (Port of First Arrival)'.

Our next artist to display is Andrew Beck, whose work — 'Emma's Rain' will be live from 1 March - 29 June 2023.

Pictured here is Sonya Lacey in front of her piece Chlorophyll (Port of First Arrival)’ — created specifically for The Lightship.

Sonya Lacey’s site-specific video presents footage which pans over a red-hued array of plants and vegetation. The extreme close-ups highlight slight movements of plants in the breeze, giving them an animated, dynamic quality.

If you haven't seen it yet, catch it on Quay Street from dusk until dawn before 28 February, 2023.

We're excited to introduce the latest piece exhibiting on The Lightship, titled 'Chlorophyll (Port of First Arrival),' by artist, Sonya Lacey.

Sonya Lacey’s new site-specific video for The Lightship presents footage which pans over a red-hued array of plants and vegetation. The extreme close-ups highlight slight movements of plants in the breeze, giving them an animated, dynamic quality.

Lacey’s footage is in fact a series of intimate observations of our large-scale vertical garden, directly adjacent to The Lightship screen. The red colour is infra-red light reflecting the chlorophyll in the various plants’ cells, back towards the camera’s sensor. Chlorophyll functions almost as a mirror for infrared light, meaning that cameras operating on this frequency can be used to quickly assess the number of green plants in an area.

Likewise, the vertical garden at our port is used as a test site for biosecurity measures, operating as a kind of early-warning system that will attract invasive species arriving in cargo and allow them to be headed off before they endanger wild habitats.

The piece builds on previous works in which Lacey connects the physiological needs of plants with those of humans, and with a broader idea of how time is experienced via the rhythms of the body.

The commissioned site-specific artwork which will be displayed on The Lightship from dusk until dawn every night until February 28, 2023.

You can learn more about her journey through the world of art here; www.thelightship.co.nz

Thank you to everyone who came and checked out Sean Kerr's piece for The Lightship, 'A Random Rant'.

Our next artist to display is Sonya Lacey, whose work will be live from 16 November, 2022 until 28 February, 2023!

We're thrilled to share that The Lightship was awarded Silver in the Design Communication category at the Best Design Awards 2022!

With the help of Crave, Signify, and Ports of Auckland's Infrastructure team, we transformed our three-story car handling building on Bledisloe Wharf into a contemporary public art gallery for established and emerging local artists, with Australasia’s largest (reduced LED format) digital light wall. Our goal was to create a cultural hotspot that gives back to Aucklanders.

Since its launch in October 2020, we've showcased twelve amazing artist's work so far. Pictured are a few of the pieces that have lit up The Lightship over the last two years.

The Designers Institute of New Zealand

Pictured here is ‘A Random Rant’ — randomly selected snippets of bold text, which pops into view in rapid-fire succession, a bewildering stream-of-consciousness, barrage of buzzwords, chatty comments, and ‘90s-style emojis.

If you haven’t seen it yet, catch Sean Kerr's work from dusk until dawn every night until 15 November, 2022.

A sneak preview of ‘A Random Rant’ – the new site-specific artwork created for The Lightship by Sean Kerr.

The piece offers a sly commentary on the absurdities that arise
when the sterile world of technology encounters the teeming chaos
of the everyday.

This new piece will be live from dusk until dawn every night until 15 November, 2022.

Pictured here is ‘Everything’ — a stunning piece created specifically for The Lightship by Acting Head of Elam, Fiona Jack.

If you haven’t seen it yet, catch it on Quay Street from dusk until dawn before 30 March, 2022!



University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau Creative Arts and Industries, the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts

Introducing ‘Broken Embraces’, a new site-specific artwork created for The Lightship by Sione Tuívailala Monū.

This new piece will be live from dusk until dawn every night until Thursday 27 May, 2021.

Introducing ‘Pūtahitanga kura', a new site-specific artwork created for The Lightship by Abigail Aroha Jensen & Georgina Watson 👨‍🎨🎨

The Lightship is a contemporary art platform that is visible from both land and sea, and is illuminated every night. We're so excited to share this artwork with Tāmaki Makaurau during Matariki.

This new piece will be live from dusk until dawn every evening until Sunday 18 July, 2021.

In partnership with The University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts, we’re pleased to announce our latest site-specific artwork for The Lightship ‘Onepanea’ — a new piece created by talented Master of Fine Arts student Natalie Tozer and collaborator, Sam Tozer.

Composing together numerous languages of the Waitematā and its shoreline, including semaphore, English and te reo Māori. Assembling languages that are human, nonhuman, those in everyday use and those less in currency, Onepanea works through a linguistic strata of The Lightship’s place.

This evocative new work will be live from dusk until dawn every night until 20 August 2021.

Janet Lilo, ISLOVE (2020).

The Lightship