For our third exhibition, we have a group presentation featuring Tony Guo, Priscilla Rose Howe, and Ed Ritchie.

Priscilla Rose Howe is fascinated by the realms that we cannot see, what we cannot touch, with the subconscious, the dissociative, the afterlife, and the paranormal. Since she was young Priscilla has chased otherworldliness. As a queer artist, she sees potential in otherworldliness. The characters in her work live out the freedom that exists in these disparate spaces — in a society that isn’t so heteronormative, so based on a binary reality.

Her intricate pencil drawings reference the fantastical and fluid world of films, cartoons, circus, and vaudeville — spaces where theatricality and performance take centre stage. Performing has long been a part of her life. With her drawings, she creates spaces for her characters, and our imaginations, to perform within and to challenge how we operate within domestic and built environments.

Tony Guo (1999) is a painter born in Aotearoa who grew up in Northeast China. He migrated to Tāmaki Makaurau in 2012 by himself, spending his teen years with host families while adapting to multiculturalism. Vested in modes of figurative oil paintings, Guo’s work projects queer allegory in a psycho-theatre, as moments of whimsy mask a journey into a captive dilemma.

He completed an MVA at AUT in 2022 and continues to expand his conceptual and technical realms through research and practice. 


Based in Ōtepoti, Ed Ritchie’s practice is rooted in sculpture and installation. His work considers ideas around thresholds, boundaries and the relationship between our interiors and exteriors. Ritchie completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) in 2017 through the Dunedin School of Art and has since become a founder and co-facilitator of ARI Favour. Recent exhibitions include: Central heating, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Ōtepoti (2021); heat transfers, Blue Oyster Art Project Space (2021) Lay in Measures, Enjoy Contemporary, Wellington (2021) Hush Swarms, Hot lunch, Ōtautahi Christchurch (2020); Console Whispers, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Ōtepoti (2019).

Birds, Bodies, & Things From Before The Fire
Tony Guo, Priscilla Rose Howe, Ed Ritchie
5-25th May 2023

Priscilla Rose Howe
Splendour, 2021
Graphite on paper
50cm high x 60cm wide (paper size), framed

Tony Guo
Bloodthirst, 2021
Oil on canvas
60 x 91 cm

Tony Guo
Rain, 2021
Oil on canvas
91.5 x 137 cm

Ed Ritchie
Firecomb 1
2023
Wood, aluminium, pepper corns, wax,
various seeds, various dried flora, fish lure
12 x 19 cm