instagram.com/upstairsart/ | upstairs.org.nz/events/2026/5/8/word-members-group-show

 

Attended the opening of WORD last Friday, held in a quaint corner on the second floor of a historic 1930s building of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture.

 

 

89 pieces were on display ranging from traditional oil painting impressionism to mixed media artworks with wordplay. I did not photograph document everything, just a few of what I considered to be an exemplary bunch:

 

 

Word on the Street by Bryn Corkery, $285

 

 

Hearsay by Amy Vitale, $1,200
 

 

A Word or Two in French by Marlene Milverton, $1,200

 

 

Sea Changes / FISHNCHIPS by Maxine Parkin-Jones, $120 / $135

 

 

Aroha/Love by Claire Manukia, $150

 

 

Inner Sleeve by SKW, $180

 

“There was something sacred about that: the record turning, the parer in my hands, language absorbed at the pace of listening. This work comes from that place.”

 

 

 

Memoir by Brenda Cash, $600 / Valley’ – Collar by Carlos Vano & Delphine Pujol, $350 / Weird Fishes by Marina Pauliukova, $140 / Kilroy was here by Victoria Toms, $150 / A Dance Around Words by Marlyne Jackson, $1,000 / Bookworm by Tania Pauling, $179

 

 

Neat video . . . Come to think of it, I may have missed a few unique, smaller items that were set on the gift table (maybe I should have purchased that zine after all)? Two weeks left!