Adam Art Gallery autumn exhibition focuses on the voice

Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery will open its autumn season with Peal the Bells.

one shows a choir from above, one a person in sepia holding a glove over their mouth, the third a woman in black poised to fight on the rocks
Images: [Left] Qianye and Qianhe Lin, a story is not a promise / a choral monologue (video still), 2026. Image courtesy of the artists; [centre] Anoushka Akel, Speaking Time, 2025, oil on canvas. Photo: Victor Staaf; [Right] Noor Abed, A Night We Held Between (16mm film still), 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.
This group exhibition brings together five projects within which the voice is a primary element. These artworks address the role of the collective or chorus, lament and oral archives, silence and silencing, and listening as a mode of critique or a way of knowing each other. Including three projects on display for the first time alongside existing works, the exhibition proposes that the voice offers a powerful index of our times, and calls for a focus on the way we speak and listen to each other.

Peal the Bells features paintings, sonic installation, and moving image, spanning the explicitly political to more coded representations of speech and silence. Its title an imperative and an implicit exclamation, Peal the Bells is also a prompt to speak with clarity and conviction in an era marked by the continuous chatter and flow of messages and media activity online. These works present compelling arguments for committing to listening with discernment, with empathy, and as a conscious act.

Maree Sheehan’s work Ōtairongo (2020) occupies the gallery’s entry space, featuring audio portraits of Te Rita Papesch, Ramon Te Wake, and Moana Maniapoto. Sheehan has worked with each to present an intimate sonic representation.

Anoushka Akel’s painting series, Spine, No, Happily (2026) hinges on recent moments of speech, audition, and performative action by women in the political arena. These works also question how a silent medium—painting—can have a voice.

Mo H. Zareei’s Department Press Briefings (2026) comprises sixteen concrete poems generated from language found in official government documents, paired with sonic arrangements drawn from these phrases. The work responds to the bureaucratic performance of evasion, and yet asserts that even as hollowed out signs, these words retain their effect on people's lives.

In A Night We Held Between (2024), Noor Abed asks what it means to speak when the conditions of speech have been systematically destroyed, and the archive is diminished.

Qianye and Qianhe Lin’s moving image installation not a promise / a choral monologue (2026) pivots on the collective reading of a poetic script, recorded unrehearsed. This work too is underscored by questions: what is a collective voice? How might we situate ourselves within official languages that are prevalent because of imperialism? How is one oriented or disoriented by participating in the voice of the chorus?

Exhibition details

Peal the Bells
Noor Abed, Anoushka Akel, Qianye and Qianhe Lin, Maree Sheehan, and Mo H. Zareei
18 April–21 June 2026
Curated by Abby Cunnane and Vera Mey
Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery

Opening hours
Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery
Tuesday–Sunday, 11am–5pm
FREE ENTRY