Unreal Canterbury: 26 May – 20 June 2026

Opening event: 5.30-7pm, Tuesday 26 May. All welcome.

Floor talks with the Curator will take place every Saturday at 11am throughout the show.

Unreal Canterbury brings together 11 artists whose works tilt the familiar, unsettle the expected, and reimagine the region. Canterbury appears as a place both real and slipping: braided rivers and devastating floods sit alongside scorched and ravaged earth; the land – and our identity – is staked and challenged. Familiar touchstones become strange and alien. Do we recognise ourselves in the messaging of a clean, green landscape and a shiny, rebuilt city, or does the lived reality tell a different story?

Across painting, sculpture, photography, moving image, textile and monoprints, the exhibition invites viewers to consider not only what this place is, but what it has been, what it might become, and the versions of it we carry within us.

Artists: Cakkie Lou, Dusty Urchin, Ross Ellen, Joe Furniss, Judy Rogers, Meg Maguire, Milly Brown, Olivia Mercer, Ros Huppert, Sarah Brown and Tom McCone.

Location: 388 Worcester St, free parking and entry.

Opening Hours: Wed-Thu: 11am-5pm | Fri-Sat: 10am-5pm

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Meg Maguire, "The Still Point," oil on canvas, 2025
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Ros Huppert, "The Arrival, 1957," oil on canvas, 2024
Man and His Lamb
Milly Brown, "The One," collage and acrylic on canvas, 2026
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Joe Furniss, detail of "Canterbury Plains (Making a return)," brick, lambskin, cotton thread, 2026
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Ross Ellen, "High Time #1," acrylic monoprint on paper, 2026
Tom McCone
Tom McCone, "Circuitry," audio visual, 2026
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Sarah Brown, "Land/Whenua," carpet in recycled frame, 2026
Cakkie Lou, "Peter's Barque," oil, charcoal and collage on canvas, 2025