FIRST LIGHT: AUSTRALASIA'S LARGEST PUBLIC ART LIGHTWALL RETURNS

The opening programme features new commissions by Ashleigh Taupaki, Ana Iti and Nova Paul - three leading wāhine Māori artists whose practices explore language, whenua, whakapapa and ecology.

Presented by Port of Auckland and curated by Simon Bowerbank, First Light brings six newly commissioned contemporary artworks to The Lightship across a year-long public art programme.

Stretching 110 metres across Bledisloe Wharf, standing 13 metres high and illuminated by approximately 8,500 LED lights, The Lightship has become one of Auckland's most distinctive public art experiences over the past six years, transforming working port infrastructure into a free outdoor gallery where art, industry and public life meet.

First Light Opening Artists //

First Light explores one of Aotearoa's defining experiences: arrival. Through six newly commissioned works presented across the year, the programme reflects on welcome, belonging and connection to place, considering the relationships between harbour, land and city, and between mana whenua and manuhiri.

Ashleigh Taupaki, Ana Iti and Nova Paul will present the first three opening commissions in First Light.

Taupaki is a multidisciplinary artist and writer, Ana Iti is the recipient of the Walters Prize, and Nova Paul is an internationally recognised artist and filmmaker whose work has screened at the Sundance Film Festival.  Together, their practices explore language, whenua, whakapapa and ecology through sculpture, moving image, film and research.

Three further artist commissions will be announced in early 2027, completing the six-part First Light programme.

First Light launches on 1 September 2026 and is free to experience every evening from dusk until dawn at The Lightship, Bledisloe Wharf.

EVENT DETAILS

What:                                       First Light - The Lightship 2026/27 Public Art Programme

Launch:                                  Tuesday 1 September 2026

Where:                                    The Lightship, Bledisloe Wharf, Port of Auckland

Viewing:                                Free - Every night from dusk until dawn

To find out more about The Lightship, or upcoming artist installations, visit www.thelightship.co.nz

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Installation 1 | 1 September – 31 October 2026 | Ashleigh Taupaki [b. 1997]

IWI Ngāti Hako + Samoan

Ashleigh Taupaki (Ngāti Hako, Sāmoan) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Working primarily through sculpture, drawing and research, her practice explores relationships between people, whenua and the more-than-human world. Taupaki draws upon iwi narratives, mātauranga Māori, ecology and memory to examine how histories are carried by particular landforms and materials. Her work frequently employs processes of mapping and material collaboration to question colonial systems of knowledge while revitalising connections to the lands and stories of Hauraki. She is a doctoral candidate at Elam School of Fine Arts and Design and received a Ngā Manu Pīrere Award in 2020.

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Installation 2 | 1 November – 31 December 2026 | Ana Iti [b. 1989]

IWI Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tūpoto, Ngāti Here, and Pākehā

Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tūpoto, Ngāti Here, Pākehā) is an artist based in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay. Working across sculpture, moving image, sound and text, Iti explores the ways language, landscape and personal experience participate in the construction of history. Her practice often brings archival and inherited forms of knowledge into conversation with embodied experience, examining transformation, tension and the relationships through which meaning is produced. Iti completed a BFA in Sculpture at Ilam School of Fine Arts in 2012 and an MFA at Massey University in 2018. In 2024, she received Aotearoa’s Walters Prize for A resilient heart like the mānawa

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Installation 3 | 1 January – 28 February 2027 | Nova Paul [b. 1973]

IWI Te Uriroroi/Ngāpuhi/MāoriTe Parawhau/Ngāpuhi/Māori Te Māhurehure ki Whatitiri/Ngāpuhi/Māori Ngāpuhi/Māor

Nova Paul (Te Uriroroi, Te Parawhau, Ngāpuhi) is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose practice is grounded in kaupapa Māori approaches to image-making. Working particularly with analogue film, Paul explores relationships between whenua, whakapapa, language, time and the material processes through which images are formed. Her experimental films frequently treat the landscape and the natural world as active participants rather than passive subjects. In works such as Rākau, Paul has used plant matter gathered from pūriri trees to develop 16mm film depicting those same trees, creating a cyclical relationship between subject, material and image. Her work extends across filmmaking, publishing, teaching, curatorial practice and Indigenous research.

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Presenting First Light | 2026–2027 | The Lightship

First Light is a six-part programme that forms The Lightship’s 2026-2027 programme. This year’s programme asks, what is communicated in the first moments of arrival? Who speaks for the land? What histories and responsibilities sit behind its hospitality?

Rather than presenting a fixed image of New Zealand, the programme invites artists to consider arrival as a layered encounter between harbour and city, land and sea, mana  whenua and manuhiri, expectation and experience.

The works may approach welcome as gesture, signal, protocol, invitation, performance or challenge.

Across six projects, First Light will build a shifting portrait of welcome in Aotearoa: plural, grounded, generous and critically self-aware. The programme proposes that first impressions are never neutral: they are constructed through images, architecture, language, movement and memory.

The Lightship becomes more than a public screen. It operates as a place where arrival is made visible, and where the terms of welcome can be imagined anew.

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About Simon Bowerbank

Simon Bowerbank is a curator and gallery director with a focus on contemporary art, technology, and public space. He has curated The Lightship for the past four years and is also Director of Whangārei Art Museum.

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Celebrating Six Years of Public Art //

Stretching 110 metres across Bledisloe Wharf, standing 13 metres high and illuminated by approximately 8,500 LED lights, The Lightship is Australasia's largest public art lightwall.

Over the past six years, it has presented works by 24 leading artists from Aotearoa and Australia, transforming working port infrastructure into one of Auckland's most recognisable public art experiences.

Visible free of charge from dusk until dawn, The Lightship has become a landmark where art, industry and public life meet.