The Circus Comes to Town | Wayne Youle & Ans Westra: {Suite}

Please join Wayne at {Suite} from 10am on Saturday 21 March for coffee and pastry to celebrate the exhibition opening, to be followed by an artist talk at 11am. 

Following their successful debut in New York in 2025, {Suite) is pleased to present the first showing in Aotearoa New Zealand of digital collage works by Wayne Youle on Ans Westra photos. In this exhibition, Youle applies his trademark deft touch to a series of Westra images made for the 1965 school journal 'The Circus Comes to Town’.

What makes the exchange between Youle and Westra tender is that it began with friendship. Through their shared representation at {Suite} Gallery, they often slipped into the back room at openings, leaving the crowd behind and instead forming a bond that would last for the rest of Westra’s life.

Youle works like a careful visual storyteller. At first glance their collaborative works seem casual, shapes drifting off centre without the polish digital tools promise. Yet the looseness is deliberate. Images are scanned, cut, and placed again until they arrive at the exact right imperfection. Seams remain visible. Scale slips slightly out of place. The result carries the familiar provocation that a child might have done it. That reaction is part of the joke. What appears effortless is the result of patient and attentive labour.