Bruce Connew

Bruce Connew is an acclaimed Auckland-based artist and photographer whose work can be found in both public galleries and private collections across the country. 

Other than a brief interlude at Guildford School of Art, Connew is entirely self-taught and examines a breadth of subjects from the wryly prosaic to the chillingly confrontational. His images speak to the tension that often underlies narratives defined by dual perspectives, and convey such narratives with striking depth and complexity. While photography is his primary medium, Connew’s work resists easy categorisation.

For his most recent body of work, the artist spent several years roaming the many memorials and gravestones of Aotearoa’s colonial wars to seek out the texts on these testaments to folly. A vocabulary of colonisation. The highly celebrated series of photographs ‘A Vocabulary’ is touring nationally between 2020 and 2022 and is accompanied by a book published by the artist’s publishing house Vapour Press.