In their works addressing the environment—whenua, moana, and often, the adjacent politics of extraction, research, or storytelling—artists Matthew Galloway and Ana Iti each draw on the tools and languages of design. While their approaches are distinct, they share an interest in historical and present-day human relationships with the land, and in their interpretation of monumental industrial infrastructural projects through intimate narrative, correspondence, or print-based media.

For Galloway, design and publishing is an inherently political exercise. In The Power that Flows Through Us (2022-23), a multi-site installation employing drone footage, sculpture, archival political cartoons and a newspaper publication, he mobilises a critique of the ‘clean green’ status of renewable energy generation via hydro dams in Aotearoa. For Iti, moving image and sculptural work often embodies politics relating to language, pūrākau, and natural materials. In her recent video work I am a salt lake (2023) the perceived neutrality of industrial scale salt extraction is subtly questioned, within a larger inquiry about identity itself. In this conversation with curator Abby Cunnane, Galloway and Iti discuss how elements of design—words, formal concerns, materiality—inform and enliven their practices.


Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Pākehā) is an artist based in Te Matau-a-Maui Hawkes Bay. She works across sculpture, video, and text. Iti’s work explores poetic and structural relationships between language and our environment, as well as the practices of shared and personal history-making. Iti has a BFA (Sculpture) from the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Ōtautahi Christchurch and a MFA from Toi Rauwharangi Massey University in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Iti was the recipient of the Grace Butler Memorial Award in 2022 and is a nominee for the 2024 Walters Prize.

Abby Cunnane (Pākehā) is a curator and writer, currently based in Ōtautahi Christchurch, where she is director at The Physics Room. She studied art history at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, and is co-editor, with artist Amy Howden-Chapman, of The Distance Plan, an online platform for the discussion of contemporary art and climate change. She has worked with Ana Iti as a curator and written on a number of past projects, including Kimihia te āhua (Te Tuhi, 2020); I do worry, waiting (essay, Parehuia McCahon House, 2021), and I am a salt lake (The Physics Room, 2023).