Art in the Park (AITP) is a four-day celebration of contemporary New Zealand art held at Eden Park. This year the event (from Thursday 12 to Sunday 15 November) features 150 artists and over 3,000 artworks. Christine Young talked to three North Shore artists about their art and exhibiting at the event.
Devonport artist Anna Victoria takes commissions when time allows, and has also exhibited locally. In 2025, she exhibited an updated Devonport collection at The Depot, and her work is in Flagstaff Gallery and on her website. She first exhibited at AITP in 2021, when she won the Emerging Artist award. She also exhibited in 2022. In 2023, after her son was born, her art practice temporarily went on hold. “I suppose I did whatever the opposite of emerging is. Retreated?” In 2025, she started “more regularly creating again, and stayed in touch with the organisers.” She was invited to apply for this year, and is excited to be back, exhibiting nine new pieces.
“Something extra special for me about Art in the Park [this year] is that my dad Pete Cernis is exhibiting too. He’s a spectacular artist – classically trained, but beyond craft, there’s so much feeling and emotion in his work. He’s an inspiration, and incredibly supportive of me and my work even though our styles are so different. You’ll find us side by side, probably talking about each other’s work as much as our own.”
Anna says she has “always had the drive to create…. The style I work in at the moment began in 2020. It was an experiment during lockdown, a study of heritage architecture in Devonport, spotted on my daily walks. The local community was so supportive and professional opportunities started from there.
“It’s a juggle with a nearly three-year-old, and my freelance work as a creative strategist, but I’ll always make time for art.” Anna describes her practice as “unusual”, as she works digitally in Microsoft PowerPoint. But she stresses that her art is far removed from “a dreadful slide presentation. It’s fiddly and time consuming and often infuriating, but I make my designs out of basic shapes and lines, clicking around on my little laptop. I then work with a fantastic fine art printer –Print Art on Barry’s Point Road – to bring it into the physical world as the highest quality prints, always limited edition. I’m not sure if anyone else in the world is using PowerPoint this way.
“The work I’m showing this year is a series of DOC [Department of Conservation] huts from around Aotearoa. The landscapes they’re within play a much larger role in my pieces this time, with the huts often small and nestled in the environment. Previously I’d place a building front and centre, without much surrounding context.”
Aside from exhibiting, Anna has also bought works at Art in the Park. “A year I wasn’t exhibiting, I chose an artwork and as I walked away with it, I spotted the artist do a little celebration and her artist neighbours give her a thumbs up. I thought – I know that magic feeling! I love art and I love artists.”
Torbay resident Christian Nicholson was asked to exhibit at the first AITP and has been involved ever since. “I am ridiculous,” he says. “I bring far too many works. Often up to 50 pieces. You just never know which ones people are going to want… But I always bring about 10 new pieces each show.”
Christian has been a full-time artist for more than 20 years, expressing his creativity in many ways. “Although I mainly do painting, I also do sculpture, photography, film and music. I have featured in Sculpture in the Gulf and Sculpture OnShore several times, made a feature film, and recently went to London to photograph people naked in the streets of London.” The week after he talked to Channel Mag, he was off to Los Angeles to take part in a Kiwi art exhibition ('Kiwis in LA') and then on to a film festival in Utah where his new short film (“a silly space comedy”, he says) is playing.
“For Art in the Park, I exhibit a mixture of landscapes and nostalgia-based pop art. I love revisiting aspects of my youth in my work, whether it's kids riding bikes till the sun went down or pictures of famous rock stars from when I was growing up. Connecting with these parts of my life helps me connect with others who have shared a similar journey. It makes me happy when people find joy in my work.
“I tend to do big paintings and often finish them off in resin. Although there are no rules. It just depends on where the painting takes me and my mood at the start of the painting. A lot of my works involve a lot of research and compositional experimentation before I start painting, whereas others will just come together more spontaneously and organically, like a landscape.”
Christian is represented by several galleries in New Zealand, including Art by the Sea in Takapuna. In addition to his trip to Los Angeles, he is also delivering work to the American Art Gallery, a contemporary gallery in Carmel by the Sea. He also exhibits in other art shows, such as the NZ Art Show in Wellington, the Christchurch Art Show, and the Brisbane Art Show. “I also have a website and Instagram.”
“Art is what I do because I realised what makes me happy,” Christian says. “I used to work in advertising as an art director. I enjoyed that but always struggled a bit with corporate life. I felt slightly unfulfilled, like there was something missing. Then I found myself without a job and had an art exhibition. It felt so good, like a piece of a puzzle had just been found. I knew this was what I should be doing, and I have not looked back.”
Christian says he doesn’t “mix much,” except at AITP and similar shows. “That's why they are so great. It gets us mixing with other artists and also with the people that enjoy our art."
Like Christian, Fraser Williamson didn’t apply to exhibit at AITP. “I was already with Flagstaff Gallery, which was owned by Cary Cochrane who, with Sofija Matich, brought Art in the Park into existence. I had done a number of solo and group exhibitions with the gallery, and they asked me if I would like to be part of the first show.”
This year he has five works in the exhibition. “For a change, I started early and have had a very quietly productive year working on all the pieces at the same time. If I got stuck, I could put something else up and work on it, coming back to the creative hurdle, the solution to which often seemed obvious on return.” Perhaps that’s the benefit of experience. Fraser started “35-odd years ago” illustrating children’s books. “My painting came out of that. I have been full-time for that whole period and currently still do both practices. The narrative nature of books morphed into my painting style, and they are ‘stories’ in a sense.”
Fraser still has work in Devonport’s Flagstaff Gallery, and his ongoing illustration practice includes children’s books and magazine work. He has also had “a gig with ‘New Zealand Doctor’ magazine for nearly the entire 35 years of my career. I do a section called 'How To Treat' where I give visual expression to the ailment of the day. My degree of humour, which can be barbarous, needs to be calibrated to the sensitivity of the subject.”
In his current works, he says, he wanted to address “the butchery and predation of our times without being preachy. An image of the goddess Kali really kicked off the series, and I would say it is about the divine feminine. Not the lovey-dovey kind but the one who, when messed with and outraged too often, tears your face off and feeds it to you.”
All three artists spoken to attest to the value of shows like AITP in bringing together emerging and established artists, giving artists the opportunity to meet art lovers and other artists, and visitors the opportunity to meet artists and purchase original works directly from the artists.
Fraser perhaps sums it up. Art, he says, is “an interesting conversation between, originally, the artist and the work and then, subsequently, between the person who has purchased it and the work. Over the years, the painting speaks to the observer, and a much more interesting realm is entered into which invites wonder and often some form of comfort.”
