SCAPE Public Art’s Tyson Campbell has challenged six artists to explore ‘The Limits of Language’ for this year’s season of the festival, which will bring a truly monumental presence to city streets from 7 November to 1 February, 2026.
Tyson, in his second year as managing curator of SCAPE, is inviting the artists to explore how ideas move beyond words, using public art to test the borders of communication, connection and expression.
The artists are:
- Sabin Holloway, a photographer and cinematographer who lives and works in Lyttelton. His aesthetic is “to find beauty in the unexpected”.
- Nichola Shanley, also of Lyttelton, who works with silk paintings, lights, ceramics and similar materials to create sacred vessels.
- Mollie Shaw, a graphic designer based in Ōtautahi and a 2024 graduate of the Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury. Mollie’s work explores the social and political dimensions of design, often engaging with themes like migration, surveillance and bureaucracy.
- Vaimaila Urale, a Samoan-born interdisciplinary artist based in Auckland. Her work uses ASCII characters such as “<”, “>”, “/”, and “\” to create graphic compositions that reference traditional Samoan motifs found in tapa and tatau.
- Gus Dark, a Balinese illustrator and social activist whose work blends art with advocacy.
- George Watson, an artist based in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa who explores aspects of early settler society through sculptural installations. Author Katherine Mansfield has been a recurring theme in her work.
SCAPE Public Art installs free-to-view art in central Christchurch. At its heart, it is about bringing communities together in public spaces through contemporary art.