25 September - 15 October 2026

This exhibition brings together two bodies of work painted several years apart, united by their origin in memory and close observation rather than the easel-before-the-view immediacy for which White is best known.

The first is a series of South Island landscapes, completed from his Napier studio during the 2021 lockdown. Unable to travel, White turned to country he knew intimately from years of plein air painting trips south — working not from the subject itself but from the accumulated memory of it. The resulting paintings carry that distinctive quality: landscapes rendered with the specificity of direct observation, filtered through recollection and studio distance.

The second body of work turns to Te Mata Peak, close to home. Its centrepiece is Willows, a large autumnal scene looking up toward the peak through a foreground of golden-leaved willows. Around it hangs a series of six smaller Te Mata studies, painted like fragments or windows into a larger seen. These pieces push White's handling of light and dark toward near-abstraction: up close, the paint resolves into loose, visibly gestural brushwork; step back, and the same marks tighten into the recognisable peaks and troughs of the hillside. The effect asks the viewer to move, to find the point at which mark-making gives way to landscape.

Seen together, the two bodies of work give an insight into Freemans remarkable ability to capture light and the essence of these magnificent landscapes. There is an almost photographic likeness in the larger works but we see the evidence of the human hand in crafting these impressive renderings and get insight into the amount of time and focus that goes into recreating these majestic scenes in the studio.