About
Louise Stevenson is a visual artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Working largely on paper, she moves across drawing, painting, photography, moving image and stitch, weaving personal archives into wider global stories.
Her research focuses on colonial-era modernist architecture in the tropics, shaped by formative years in Honiara, Solomon Islands, and informed by a family archive of photographs and film. She has published on tropical modern architecture in the Pacific and presented at conferences in New Zealand and Australia.
Louise holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and was previously a senior lecturer at the Manukau School of Visual Arts and a professional teaching fellow at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. She founded the community arts business ArtSpark and is currently Director of Te Toi Uku, Crown Lynn and Clayworks Museum.
Essays & Press
- Open the Borders, Expand the Mind, The Big Idea, Soap Box, 2022
- On Louise Stevenson's 'Someplace Else', Chris Holdaway essay, Contemporary HUM, 2021
- Someplace Else, a feature in HERE magazine, issue 6, 2021
- Black Hibiscus, Radio New Zealand interview, Arts on Sunday, Pacific Issues correspondent Richard Pamatatau, 2008
- Nothing but Something, First Draft, Sydney exhibition with Frances Hansen, essay by Grant Thompson, 2008
- Nancy, group exhibition catalogue essay, Bronwyn Lloyd, 2003
Projects & Exhibitions
- Unbound, solo exhibition, Skar Image Lab, 2022
- Someplace Else: A Travel Archive, solo exhibition, Corbans Estate Arts Centre, 2022
- Someplace Else, artist book published 2021, funded by Creative New Zealand
- Someplace Else, the Project Wall, Te Tuhi, 2021
- Transparencies, photography prize awarded by curator Ioana Gordon-Smith, Art West exhibition 2016
- Sea, Sight, Site, film screening at Building Is/ Not Drawing, Adam Art Gallery, 2015
- Images and Islands, Mangere Arts Centre, 2013
- The National Solomon Islands Library, Auckland City Library, 2013
- Black Hibiscus, Fresh Gallery, Otara, Auckland, 2008
- Something from Nothing, exhibition with Frances Hansen, First Draft Gallery, Sydney, 2008
Writing
- (Re)constructing Tropical Architecture in Solomon Islands: Conversations with my Father Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2014
- Communications Building: Tropical Modern Architecture from West Africa to the Pacific Translation: Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, vol. 31, 2014
- Concrete Activities: Tropical Modern Buildings in the Pacific Paper presented at the Open Hand Symposium, Auckland University of Technology, 2014.