Tuesday 13 October | 6pm - 7:30pm
General: $17:50, Friends of the Gallery: $13,
Students: Free (Student ID's required on attendance)

How might scent be a carrier of stories, memory and of lived experiences?  
 
We close the 2026 Monica Brewster Evening Series with an immersive conversation exploring the world of custom perfume creation. Multidisciplinary scent artist Nathan Taare (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tama) will share how his practice spans multimedia art, oil painting, sculpture and olfactory art — with a focus on scent as a public, expressive medium deeply tied to whakapapa. Taara is currently creating bespoke perfume brand development for small fashion brands, and in June presents work at The Biennale d'art contemporain autochtone (BACA) / Contemporary Native Art Biennial in Montreal.

For Nathan, scent is more than fragrance, it is a carrier of story, belonging and lived experience. Join us for an evening that invites us to tune into how olfactory cues consciously connect us with memory and illuminate our emotional landscapes.  In a world saturated with visual culture, Nathan’s work asks what it might mean to slow down and return to the quiet intimacy of smell. His practice reminds us that scent can both hold and transmit histories, offering space for connection, reflection and care in the present. 

Nathan Taare (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tama) is a multidisciplinary artist and freelance Production Designer & Art Director from Aotearoa, based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and working globally. While his primary focus is film, his practice spans sonic art, photography and olfactory design. Known for bold aesthetics, precise execution and emotionally resonant work, Taare explores scent as a public, artistic and expressive medium, tracing its deep connection to whakapapa and lived experience.

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Welcome to the 2026 Monica Brewster Evening Speaker Series — a year shaped by visionaries who remind us that dreaming is both a personal act and a collective experience.

This year, we’re thinking about visionary dreams not as distant ideals, but as layered conversations: shaped by place, ancestry, lived experience, and the work of imagining otherwise.
 
Each speaker brings a distinct perspective on what emerges when communities, artists, thinkers, and leaders choose to dream with clarity, courage, and care. Maria Lind invites us to consider what it means to ‘dig where we stand’ and to understand creative practice through the ground it grows from; Tusiata Avia shows us how truth-telling, poetry, and performance can unsettle power and carve space for vulnerability; Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa opens a window onto the Moana as a site of deep history and visionary future-making; Vince Ropitini demonstrates how design guided by mātauranga Māori can carry ancestral narratives into global contexts and Leki Jackson-Bourke with the Lalaga Youth Ambassadors reveal how rangatahi dreams can reshape regional, cultural, and artistic imaginaries.

Across the series, audiences are invited to consider how dreaming can be relational, grounded, and deeply local — as well as expansive enough to hold global entanglements.  

As we gather for conversations that illuminate what becomes possible when we listen to where we stand, and to one another - Join us!